Rise of Conscientious Objection

Although only a handful of them have gone public, several hundred U.S. soldiers have applied for conscientious objector (CO) status since January, says a human rights group.

The Center on Conscience and War (CCW), which advises military personnel on CO discharges, reports that since the start of 2003, when many soldiers realized they might have to fight in the Iraq war -- and perhaps others -- there has been a big increase in the number of enlisted soldiers who have applied for CO status.

"The bare minimum is several hundred, and this number only includes the ones that have come to my group and to groups we're associated with," CCW official J.E. McNeil told IPS.

"There will be others who will have gone through different channels, and some people do it on their own," she added.

To be granted CO status, a service member must prove a strong moral objection to war in all its forms.

Only a small percentage of people who apply receive such status. But military statistics lag about one year behind, and the decisions on CO applications take on average of six months to one year -- sometimes as long as two years. As a result, the exact number of COs in the Iraq war will not be known for some time.

Also, military figures do not count applications from servicemen who are absent without leave, so they will not include Stephen Funk, a marine reservist who was on unauthorized leave before he publicly declared himself a conscientious objector and reported back to his military base in San Jose, California on April 1.

Funk, 20, said he realized he was against all war during his training, which including having to bayonet human-shaped dummies while shouting, "kill, kill."

Since publicly declaring his opposition to war, he has become a symbol of resistance both in the United States and around the world.

"Since Stephen went public," says Aimee Allison, a CO from the first Gulf War who has been supporting Funk, "some people from Yesh Gvul have contacted me to pledge their support for Stephen and to show solidarity and to thank him for making a stand." Yesh Gvul is a group of Israeli soldiers who have refused to fight in the occupied territories in Palestine.

"People in other countries are proud that an American can stand up to the hegemony and the violence of the war in Iraq," she adds.

Soldiers in other countries, including Turkey, have refused to fight in the current war. Three British servicemen were sent home from the Persian Gulf after objecting to the conduct of the invasion and a U.K. member of parliament, George Galloway, says he "is calling on British forces to refuse to obey the illegal orders" involved in the war.

As is the case in the British army, CO discharge is a long-established practice in the U.S. armed forces and always peaks in wartime. CCW says there were an estimated 200,000 COs in the Vietnam War, 4,300 in the Korean War, 37,000 in World War II and 3,500 in World War I.

The military granted 111 soldiers CO status in the first Gulf War before putting a stop to the practice, resulting in 2,500 soldiers being sent to prison, says Bill Gavlin from the Center on Conscience and War, quoting a report from the Boston Globe newspaper.

During that war, a number of U.S. COs at the U.S. Marine Camp LeJeune in North Carolina were "beaten, harassed and treated horribly," Gavlin says. In some cases, COs were put on planes bound for Kuwait, told that they could not apply for CO status or that they could only apply after they'd already gone to war.

As far as Gavlin knows, that type of treatment has not happened this time. But he has counseled service members who were harassed. For example, one woman was told that if she applied for CO status she would be court-martialed. It is not an offence to apply, and her superiors threatened her, Gavlin says, "to intimidate her."