Bulgarians, Israelis
More soldiers refuse to be colonial occupiers
By John Catalinotto
As 2004 began, two separate incidents showed
there is growing resistance from rank-and-file soldiers who are
ordered to enforce oppressive occupations.
In Bulgaria, some 30 soldiers have refused to go to Iraq to
serve as a repressive occupation force there. In Israel, a
court on Jan. 4 sentenced five Israeli "refuseniks" to one year
in prison. The judges explained these harsh sentences as a way
of teaching a lesson to others.
Five hundred Bulgarian troops are now serving under Polish
command around Kar bala, an Iraqi city about 70 miles south
west of Baghdad. Car-bomb attacks in Karbala on Dec. 27 killed
19 people. Five of them were Bulgarian soldiers; another 26
Bulgarians were wounded, six seriously.
This sudden crisis forced Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai
Svinarov and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg to quickly
return home from foreign trips. On Dec. 29, the government held
a national day of mourning for the soldiers and conducted
burials in their home towns.
Both the Polish and the Bulgarian governments are openly
pro-NATO and pro-U.S. regimes. Bulgaria's president and prime
minister have vowed to keep the troops in Iraq. But, according
to the BBC on Dec. 29, "other commentators have sounded a more
critical note. One paper noted in a headline that Bulgarian
soldiers are risking their lives in Iraq to earn $60 a
day."
By Jan. 2, the Bulgarian army chief of staff had to announce
that over two dozen of the 500 troops scheduled to replace the
current contingent in Iraq had refused to go. "Between 25 and
30 soldiers have declined duty, probably as a result of
pressure from their families," Gen. Nikola Kolev told the
media.
For decades, when Bulgaria was part of the Warsaw Pact,
along with other East European countries and the USSR, Bul
garian troops were never sent outside Eur ope. Their duty was
to defend the socialist camp. Now, with the return of
capitalism, their role has become cannon fodder for U.S.
imperialism. It must be an unplea sant pill for the Bulgarian
population to swallow.
General Kolev said that these troops who un-volunteered
would have to pay the cost of their training and medical
examinations, but mentioned no further punishment. Resistance
inside the Bulgarian military is still at an early stage, but
it clearly has much popular support.
Harsh sentence for Israeli draft resisters
In Israel, military resisters have begun to have a big
impact on the national consciousness. The right-wing Israeli
government has countered with harsh punishment. On Jan. 4, the
five Israeli soldiers known as refuseniks, all under the age of
20, were each sentenced to one year in jail for refusing to
join the "Israeli Defense Forces."
The five conscripts had signed a statement while still in
high school declaring they would not serve in the IDF "as long
as it acts as an army of occupation."
The judges wrote in their ruling that the sentence was to
serve as a warning to others. Col. Avi Levi, speaking for a
three-judge panel, said: "From analyzing the testimonies of the
accused we have come to the conclusion that their acts are
mainly motivated by the wish to extend opposition against
government policy in the Territories and draw a stream of
others to follow in their footsteps, either by refusing to
enlist or refusing to serve in the territories."
He justified repressing their speech, saying that when the
"offense [is] committed for the specific purpose of drawing the
general public into mass law-breaking, when there is a concrete
reason to worry about a large number of people, and in that way
causing incalculable damage to the army and the state, it is
undoubtedly justifiable to mete out a more severe punishment,
in order to let the masses at whom the accused directed their
call see and understand that the price of refusal is a severe
and painful punishment."
The five young men said the sentence would not stop the
refusenik movement. They objected to getting long prison terms
for matters of conscience when Israeli troops who commit war
crimes hardly get a slap on the wrist.
Experienced and even special troops are also resisting being
used to punish civilian protests. In December, 13 reser vists
from the Sayeret Matkal unit made their statement in a letter
to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon:
"We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to
the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human
rights to millions of Palestinians and we will no longer serve
as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise."
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak once commanded this
unit. Just as with the refusal of certain Israeli pilots to
refuse duties enforcing the occupation, this refusal by elite
troops puts the entire role of the IDF in question.
Recent polls have shown that about 25 percent of the Israeli
population now oppo ses the forceful occupation of the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip. This change of attitude is due
primarily to the continued Intifada, or uprising, of the
Palestinian people, who have risked all to regain their
national rights despite ferocious repression from the Israeli
regime.
Reprinted from the Jan. 15, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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