PUBLIC STATEMENT

In Latin America and the whole world, actions are being held to commemorate the International Conscientious Objector Day.

In all these places, the right to refuse to be part of the machinery of war, of military expenditures, of arms production and sale, of unjust laws, of military service, is being demanded.

Our demands help to build a more just, tolerant society, free of torture, of unfair imprisonment, and discrimination; we build this through nonviolent direct action, total objection, civil resistance and disobedience, and fundamentally through Conscientious Objection, understood as the rejection of militarism, war and the causes of war.

That is why here in Chile we express our rejection of the conscientious objection clause included in the Military Service Reform Law, because we consider it to be made for the benefit of the Armed Forces, and it does not guarantee the right to choose, demanding requirements that limit our choice.

Today we put a special attention on the fight for the demilitarisation of Latin America, a region that is victim of extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy, discrimination, slavery; abuses that are fuelled by this economic and social model that only thinks in absolute profit and a shopping mall democracy, that depends on the existence of armies as one of its fundamental pillars.

The existence of Military Service and of laws that strengthen it, only causes physical deaths, as in the case of conscript Raul Aedo and many others, and psychological deaths of all who have passed through this school of authoritarianism.

That’s why we call to object to militarism.

In Chile, Latin America and the whole world, INSUMISION.

Happy birthday, Ni Casco Ni Uniforme!

Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Antimilitarismo y Objeción de Conciencia (CLAOC)
-Grupo de Objeción de Conciencia del Ecuador (GOCE)
-Movimiento de Objeción de Conciencia de Paraguay (MOC-PY)
-Servicio Paz y Justicia – Paraguay (Serpaj Py)
-Colectivo de Objeción de Conciencia de Bogotá (COC, Colombia)
Movimiento de Objeción de Conciencia “Ni Casco Ni Uniforme”
Grupo de Objeción de Conciencia “Rompiendo Filas” (Temuco)
War Resisters’ International (IRG -WRI)
Alternativa Antimilitarista – MOC Carabanchel (España)
Comunidad del Sur (Uruguay)
Comisión de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRA, Venezuela)
Insumisos de México

Santiago de Chile, May 15th, 2004