This comes via The Sauce:'Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has been sent to jail for his refusal to fight the war in Afghanistan - on the same day that Gordon Brown tried to justify to the Chilcot Inquiry his role in the illegal Iraq war.
Joe Glenton was sentenced today to nine months imprisonment for refusing to fight in a war he strongly feel is unjustified and a sensless loss of life for Afghans and British soldiers alike. Earlier charges related to speaking publically about his anti-war stance were dropped.
A spokesperson for Stop the War said: "This extremely harsh sentence ignored many of the facts of the case; that Joe had post-traumatic stress disorder, that he had raised concerns about the war with his superiors and been bullied as a result, and that he had voluntarily returned to barracks after going absent without leave.
"The judge herself made it clear the sentence was not based on the facts of the case but on a desire to deter other members of the military from taking a stand of conscience."
She added: "Joe is a brave and defiant man. He left the court under guard with a clenched fist held high. His outspoken defiance and the national campaign to defend him had already forced the authorities to drop the much more serious charge of desertion."
The Stop the War Coalition has now vowed to widen the campaign to defend Joe Glenton until he is free.'
See my own previous posts about Joe's case, including HERE.
An appalling case. You have to wonder if people who join the military really understand what they're signing up for, and what the consequences will be if they "desert" for whatever reason. (I dislike the word "desert". These people are risking their lives because some politician ordered them to, and are also expected to murder other, often innocent, people. They may have been trained to do this, but they're still human, and not many humans could be faced with such horrors and not be affected. So "desert", in my humble opinion, makes it sound like their refusal to go back to the killing fields is just a whim, a decision taken lightly, when it mostly is not.) And of course in this case the war was illegal, which makes it even more outrageous that he's being punished.
ReplyDeleteI also think that any political leader who declares war should personally lead the troops into battle. That'd soon stop them!