conscientious objection

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The military in the United States portrays itself as endowed with the highest virtues—honor, duty, self-sacrifice, courage and patriotism. Politicians, entertainers, sports stars, the media, clerics and academics slavishly bow before the military machine, ignoring its colossal pillaging of state resources, the egregious war crimes it has normalized across the globe, its abject service not to democracy or freedom but corporate profit, and the blind, mind-numbing obedience it inculcates among its members. A lone soldier or Marine who rises up inside the system to denounce the hypermasculinity that glorifies violence and war, who exposes the false morality of the military, who refuses to kill in the service of imperial power, unmasks the military for what it is. And he or she, as Chelsea Manning has learned, swiftly pays a very, very heavy price.

By IZUMI SAKURAI/ Staff Writer

Lee Yea-da couldn't stomach the thought of mandatory military service. So he fled South Korea and sought asylum in France, an action that is almost unheard of in his country.

With few exceptions, South Korea requires all male citizens to take a physical examination at the age of 19 ahead of serving almost two years in the military.

The government deems compulsory military service necessary to counter the threat from North Korea.

Even though hundreds of men reject conscription for religious and other reasons each year, it is rare for a citizen to seek political asylum overseas.

Lee was granted asylum in 2013 by the French government.

As South Korea does not recognize the concept of conscientious objector, there is no alternative to military service other than serving a jail sentence.

Photo: Syria Deeply

A new law stipulates that young men in the cantons of Kobani, Ifrin and Al Jazeera must enlist. Now, some have begun to flee.

When 29-year-old Bassam defected from the Syrian army he thought he had escaped mandatory military service for good. The law school student fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in early 2012, then to the neighboring Syrian city of Qamishli.

But the draft followed him. On July 13 the militant arm of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which exerts civil control over Kurdish-majority areas of the northeast, introduced a bill that would force Bassam to join the Kurdish armed forces.