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Building a world of solidarity, justice and peace!
Support for the Glières gathering! For another possible and necessary world!
After two years of forced cancellation due to covid, the Glières gathering, whose objective is to defend the spirit of resistance, is back in these 27, 28 and 29 May 2022.
Wars and violence throughout the world, violence against people, persistent feminicide, attacks on fundamental freedoms, the rise of racism and fascist right-wing extremist currents of thought, the persistence of the arms race and the arms and drug trade, hunger still the leading cause of death.
These are all reasons for indignation, revolt and commitment that people like Stéphane Hessel intended to defend in this symbolic place of resistance that is the Glières plateau, reasons that the Peace Movement shares. (Note 1)
The news of the coming weeks should lead every citizen to be indignant and to get involved.
Thus, on June 10 and 12, the official France, which supports the military-industrial lobby, will host the world forum of arms sellers at Euro Satory. The arms race, which has seen the amount of military expenditure double between 2000 and 2022, rising from around 1,000 billion dollars at the beginning of the century to 2,113 billion in 2021, fuels wars and contributes greatly to climate and environmental disruption.
While the first meeting of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will be held in Vienna, Austria, from June 21 to 23, France persists in its position of violating international law with regard to the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Thus, not only does it refuse to sign the TPNW, which entered into force on January 21, 2021, but it is engaging in a new nuclear arms race through the modernization of its atomic weapons and in particular of its Force Océanique Stratégique(FOST), contrary to its commitments under the NPT (Article 6).
In this context, it is time to take up the words of Stéphane Hessel, Indignant yourself! Commit yourself! for a better world!
The Peace Movement, whose creation was initiated by resistance fighters (see note 1), supports the Glières gathering. It will honor the memory of the creators of the Peace Movement and the spirit of the initiators of the Glières gathering by multiplying initiatives throughout France during the month of June.
In the departments, its committees will multiply during this month the delegations to the prefects to denounce the immoral and illicit arms trade, will participate in the actions organized in the Paris region against the Eurosatory arms fair and to demand the reduction of military expenditure, and finally they will act for the elimination of nuclear weapons but also for the abolition of all military alliances such as NATO.
The Peace Movement will participate in the citizen’s conference organized on June 18 and 19 in Vienna, Austria by ICAN International for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Finally, it will participate in the NATO counter-summit organized in Madrid on Sunday, June 26, 2022 by the peace movements.
The Peace Movement will strongly demand a cease-fire in Ukraine and that France really takes diplomatic initiatives for a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine, for the establishment of a pan-European conference for common security in Europe, for the end of all wars and for the recognition of a State of Palestine. Finally, it will bring these demands locally to all candidates for the legislative elections.
Paris, May 28, 2022
The Peace Movement
Note n°1 : Extract from the website of the Peace Movement : “The origin of the Peace Movement is to be found in the creation of the “Combattants de la Liberté” in the days following the Second World War. At the end of 1947, Charles Tillon, a member of parliament and member of the Resistance, launched an appeal to create an organization intended to “support the republican regime and prohibit the return of fascism and dictatorship”. On February 22, 1948, some sixty personalities from the Resistance founded “Les Combattants de la Liberté” at the Hôtel des 2 Mondes in Paris, under the leadership of Yves Farge, who had been appointed Prefect of the Rhône-Alpes region by General de Gaulle at the Liberation. The statutes of this very young movement, which wanted to preserve the unitary spirit of the Resistance, were filed by Raymond Aubrac. After the 1948 Wroclaw Congress of Peoples for Peace, the World Movement of Peace Supporters was formed and encouraged the creation of national committees. In France, “les Combattants de la Liberté” became “les Combattants de la Liberté et de la Paix” and then “les Combattants de la Paix et de la Liberté” became in 1951 “le conseil national français du Mouvement de la Paix”, commonly called “Mouvement de la Paix”.
