PBI-Canada celebrates International Conscientious Objection Day and our founders who went to prison for refusing military service
Photo: Then-22-year-old Gene Keyes (with Jane Gordon) burns his draft card on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1963, in front of a Selective Service System office (that administered the draft during the Vietnam War) in Champaign, Illinois. Keyes would later move to Nova Scotia, Canada and co-found PBI in September 1981.
War Resisters’ International explains: “Every year, 15th May marks International Conscientious Objection Day (CO day) – a day to celebrate those who have, and those who continue, to resist war, especially by refusing to be part of military structures.”
The International Day of Conscientious Objection to Military Service has also described conscientious objection as a human right and organizations have noted the importance “to stand in solidarity with those who refuse to kill and engage in wars and are for this reason persecuted, criminalized and jailed.”
We take this opportunity to highlight three founders of Peace Brigades International – Charles Walker, Gene Keyes and Lee Stern – were conscientious objectors who served time in prison prior to gathering on Grindstone Island (on Algonquin territory) in Ontario, Canada in September 1981 to launch PBI as a global organization.
Charles Walker
The Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation notes: “Even as a student, Charles Walker abhorred violence and became a conscientious objector to World War II. He was a Board Member of the Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors to War. He was imprisoned for this activity and detached to hospital service.”
Gene Keyes
On May 15, 1964, Gene Keyes was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. In a telegram to the President and Attorney General, he wrote: “There is no moral validity to any part of any law whose purpose is to train people to kill one another. I hereby reject the order to report for induction.” Keyes was sentenced to six months for contempt and then in 1965 to three years in prison for failing to report for military service.
Lee Stern
And this Swarthmore College Peace Collection biography notes, “Lee Stern was a conscientious objector during World War II. He refused to report to Civilian Public Service as ordered, and was imprisoned as a result, in Milan (Michigan) from December 1942 through January 1946. While in prison, he refused to follow rules on racial segregation and sat with black prisoners during meals. His actions, along with those of other conscientious objectors eventually led to integration in the federal prison system.”
George Willoughby
It is also notable that while George Willoughby was not able to participate at the founding meeting on Grindstone Island, he was one of the signatories to the invitation to that gathering and was involved in PBI for many years afterwards.
War Resisters International provides this short biography: “George Willoughby joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in 1944 and declared conscientious objector status. He then worked at a Civilian Public Service Camp. In 1966, George and other radical Quakers formed A Quaker Action Group. The organization’s primary purpose was to use nonviolent action campaigns to shorten the Vietnam War.”
PBI founders inspired by Leo Tolstoy
More than 70 years after his death in 1910, Leo Tolstoy’s words reached out to inspire Walker, Stern, Keyes and others at the founding meeting of PBI.
Daniel N. Clark writes: “At the end of the morning [on Tuesday September 1, 1981], I was asked to give the reading at the next session to begin just after lunch and was at a loss as to what read. Gandhi and King had already been given and are hard to equal. A few minutes before the session was to begin, I went into the library and, not having found anything relevant, I finally just closed my eyes, put my hand out to a bookcase, and opened a book. What appeared was an amazingly appropriate passage by Tolstoy. Just as at that point we were all feeling inadequate for such a demanding task, Tolstoy was admonishing his readers that while many would say that we had no business launching a major enterprise for peace and justice given our poverty of resources and the formidable nature of the challenge, we had no choice but to do so, and that destiny demanded it.”
Tolstoy believed the state is by nature violent and resisted the coercive functions of state, including compulsory military service.
“Neither Helmet Nor Uniform”
Javier Gárate is one of the first publicly declared conscientious objectors in Chile and a co-founder of the conscientious objection group, Ni Casco Ni Uniforme (Neither Helmet Nor Uniform). He has written:
“We know that there are many different reasons for becoming a CO: as an assertion of my human right to say I don’t believe in killing others, as an opposition to militarism and patriarchy, as a refusal to support a specific military mission, and many more. In my case was a rejection of all that militarism stands for and in particular a strong critique of the role the military continued to play in Chile after the end of Pinochet’s military dictatorship: even if we no longer lived under a dictatorship, we did live in a military state.”
Gárate further notes:
“There are a few exceptions, whereby people make conscientious objection their main campaigning issue throughout their life but for the majority it is something in which you get involved either when you are directly confronted with military service or you know people who are subject to recruitment in your community. This means it is often the case that conscientious objection is a phase, but also a springboard in the life of activists: that passing phase tends to be at a young age, an age where a lot of people’s political ideas are formed, meaning that they can have a big impact on people, an impact that goes beyond what you find on the surface: it is an impact of long lasting change.”
After being based in Bogotá with PBI-Colombia, Gárate is now a member of the Board of Directors of PBI-Canada.
Further reading: Conscientious Objection: a springboard for radical social change (Javier Garate, War Resisters’ International, December 2015) and Court victory gives momentum to long struggle against London arms fair (Javier Garate, Waging Nonviolence, April 2016).
PBI-Canada and the War Resisters Support Campaign
In 2004, PBI-Canada endorsed the War Resisters Support Campaign. That campaign was founded to assist US military personnel who refused to participate in the Iraq war and who then came to Canada seeking asylum. It called on the Canadian government to demonstrate its commitment to international law and the treaties to which it is a signatory, by making provision for US war objectors to have sanctuary in this country.
We continue to support the right to resist war and military service.
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