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07-Jun-2006

Conscientious objectors to receive peace award

by: WRL/Martha-Page Ransdell

New York: Venerable US pacifist organisation War Resisters League will give its 2006 Peace Award to women GIs who came to believe, after they enlisted, that they objected to war and violence. Four extraordinary women, Diedra Cobb, Anita Cole, Kelly Dougherty and Katherine Jashinski, will represent the growing class of these new conscientious objectors (COs).

The US does not have formal conscription and thus for the first time in history – because service is voluntary – objectors now include women as well as men.

Commenting on the award, Ellen Barfield of the War Resisters League and Veterans for Peace, said: "These four brave women will represent the class of women now refusing, for reasons of conscience, to continue to serve in the Armed Forces".

Katherine Jashinski, one of the award recipients, will not be able to accept her award in person. Jashinski, an Army National Guard specialist, pled guilty to "refusal to obey a legal order" at her court martial on 23 May 2006 and was sentenced to 120 days confinement. She has currently served 53 days of her sentence.

"That Katherine Jashinski will now serve prison time only underlines the courage and integrity that brought all of these women to their declarations of conscience," said Barfield.

In a recent statement, Jashinski recalled the choice she made between her legal obligation to the Army, and her deepest moral values. “I will continue to follow orders that do not conflict with my conscience. I am prepared to accept the consequences of adhering to my beliefs," she said. "The thing that I revere most in this world is life, and I will never take another person's life.”

Among those gathered to lend support to the Peace Award honourees will be former GI Ellen Barfield, and former US Army officer and diplomat Ann Wright. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel has also sent a message of support.

The WRL Peace Award began in 1958 to honour an organisation or person whose work represents the League's radical nonviolent platform of action. Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against US entry into both world wars, was the first recipient. Other recipients have included peace agitator A J Muste, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, writer Grace Paley, socialist and presidential candidate Norman Thomas, feminist and pacifist theorist Barbara Deming, Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day, US Plowshares movement founder Daniel Berrigan, Judith Malina and the Living Theatre, and Iraq War opponent Fernando Suarez del Solar.

Believing war to be a crime against humanity, the War Resisters League, founded in 1923, advocates Gandhian nonviolence as the method for creating a democratic society free of war, racism, sexism, and human exploitation.

Source: War Resisters League