Picnic for Peace 25 April

April 12, 2018 Leave a comment

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Picnic for Peace: 100 years of resistance to war

Anzac day 25 April 2018

12 noon

Auckland Domain Band Rotunda

Family-friendly, free event

Join Auckland Peace Action for an alternative Anzac Day event. We’re hosting a peace picnic to commemorate conscientious objectors who resisted war. There will be inspiring speakers, music and food along with an opportunity for families to be part of creating a peace mural. Please bring food to share & a blanket to sit on.

As the end of World War 1 is marked across the country, the peace movement will take the opportunity to celebrate the courage of conscientious objectors who refused to go to war. We will also acknowledge the work of today’s peace movement to end New Zealand’s involvement in the global weapons trade and the War on Terrorism.

Please invite your family & friends through our facebook event.

Will there be justice for Fatima and others?

Auckland Peace Action tentatively welcomes the government’s announcement to hold an inquiry into the allegations contained in the book Hit and Run by investigative journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson that six civilians were killed and 15 injured in a raid on two Afghan villages in 2010 by New Zealand’s elite soldiers. This inquiry will be conducted by Supreme Court judge Sir Terence Arnold and Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

It is Auckland Peace Action’s view that any inquiry should be prepared to travel to Afghanistan to hear evidence from the people who were directly affected and gather information on the ground. This is the kind of process we would expect of any proper inquiry. We cannot expect to gain any truth from simply questioning soldiers.

APA also demands that this be a public, transparent inquiry. Any inquiry undertaken must not be allowed to be obscured from public examination by way of convenient claims to nebulous "national security" interests.

Finally, the inquiry must widened to include the entire duration of the New Zealand deployment to Afghanistan. This is because there are other very serious allegations regarding the conduct of New Zealand troops in other raids including that in the village of Band-E-Timur that have never been subject to any inquiry, and which also resulted in deaths of civilians.