WorkshopWorkshop I: Campaign “NO means NO”: Conscientious objection in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine

“Our goal is to steal Lukashenko’s army and block any of his attempts to send the Belarusian army to help Putin in Ukraine,” says Olga Karach.
In the initial phase, the main task of the campaign is to prevent forced mobilization. We help young Belarusian conscientious objectors and deserters from the army to leave Belarus. For a young Belarusian who has decided not to join the army and stay in Belarus, there is a 100 percent guarantee that he will be imprisoned for 7 to 10 years.

As a human rights organization that knows the situation in Belarusian prisons only too well, we cannot urge young Belarusian men to go to prison instead of the army, where they have been beaten, tortured and even raped, and some of them have already been killed.

Following the lecture on Friday evening, the topics will be discussed and exchanged in greater depth.

The workshop will be led by Olga Karach together with Heidi Meinzolt, WILPF.

 

Workshop II: Survival means resistance: the victims and consequences of nuclear weapons testing

To this day, the use of nuclear weapons in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests conducted worldwide have life-threatening and long-term effects on people’s health and lead to massive environmental damage. Those affected continue to suffer from radiation-related illnesses and deformities to this day. Reproductive and sexual health is also significantly impaired, resulting in an above-average number of miscarriages. The people in the test areas are the most affected by these effects, but the fallout has also spread radioactive elements into the wider environment and eventually even across the entire earth. According to estimates by Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, and Tilman Ruff, Co-President of IPPNW from 2012-2023, this radioactivity released into the atmosphere is expected to cause around 2.4 million cancer deaths in the long term.

IPPNW calls on the German government to contribute to the support of those affected by nuclear weapons tests and the clean-up of contaminated regions in accordance with the humanitarian and human rights objectives and requirements of the GCU.

The second international conference of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) took place in New York from November 27 to December 1, 2023. Juliane Hauschulz and Stella Ziegler will give a first-hand account of the conference and the developments regarding compensation for the victims.

Juliane Hauschild and Stella Ziegler, IPPNW will lead the workshop.

Further information on the “To Survive is to Resist” campaign can be found HERE

 

Workshop III: The peace movement and the demarcation from the “right”

The German peace movement is increasingly being cast in a “right-wing” light in the media. On the one hand, this is a convenient means of delegitimizing the demands of the peace movement, which run counter to demands for arms deliveries and rearmament.
stand. Secondly, since 2014, there has been a rapprochement between political forces traditionally labeled as “right-wing” or “far-right” and certain positions of the peace movement, especially with regard to Germany’s relationship with Russia.is this a new phenomenon or does this debate have a long history.what does this rapprochement mean for the peace movement, which traditionally sees itself as a left-wing, anti-fascist, internationalist and emancipatory movement? What does “right-wing” even mean when a federal government supported by the Greens and SPD wants to set up “detention camps” at the EU’s external borders (according to Green Party Lower Saxony Chairman Alaa Alhamwi, for example) and send weapons to war zones?

General information on the workshops

The event is public. the location is easily to access to all
Admission €5.00, reduced admission free.
Registration for the workshops is encouraged, but not required, on large posters at the event on Friday evening.

the event only takes place in person.