Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who talked to Dynamic for our summer issue is now free! He had been imprisoned for refusing to kill civilians and participate in an unjust war. In September, Camilo’s application for conscientious objector status was rejected. The judge who convicted him refused to hear any evidence about the commonplace torture and indiscriminate killing on which Camilo based his objection. Ironically, soldiers who tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison have recently been tried and convicted of these very acts.
Other war resisters include Pablo Paredes, a Navy officer who in December publicly refused to board a ship leaving for the Persian Gulf.
Pablo explained that like so many Americans, "never in a million years did I imagine we would go to war with somebody who had done nothing to us." He is applying for conscientious objector status, but the Navy has declared him a deserter. Meanwhile, in Canada, Jeremy Hinzman, 25, awaits a court’s decision on whether he will receive refugee status in that country.
He objects to the Iraq war as “an act of aggression with no defensive basis,� and left for Canada when the Army rejected his application for CO status.
In all these cases involving the right to object to war, the injustice of the war in Iraq is also on trial. And in every case, the right-wing corporate media has smeared these brave acts of principle as treachery or cowardice.
Camilo Mejia’s interview in Dynamic:
http://www.yclusa.org/article/archive/296/
To support Camilo: www.citizen-soldier.org or www.freecamilo.org.
To support Pablo Paredes: www.swiftsmartveterans.com
To support Jeremy Hinzman: http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/
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