conscription

29 November 2013

Police fired tear gas Wednesday to disperse youths rioting in central Mozambique after reports of forced conscription as the military battles a revived rebel group, a rights group and residents said.

Security forces clashed with protesters in central city Beira, according to the Human Rights League (LDH).

"There is a revolt on the part of the population. The police have been using tear gas," LDH representative Helder Jafar told AFP.

There were "many injuries and arrests", he added.

Residents confirmed police fired tear gas in several outlying neighbourhoods of Beira while protesters threw stones at a police station.

"There are barricades in the streets and cars are being burnt," said Stella Santos, who lives in Manga, one of the affected Beira neighbourhoods.

"They say they (the military) are conscripting the young people," she told AFP.

Image: In this ad, LG is announcing a special promotion wherein soldiers are invited to a shopping mall where LG representatives will do their laundry for them, so as to, quote "Take the load off of mom".This ad is invoking the role of mothers as supporters in order to align their product with the war effort.

Ad by Yarkoni, 2010

Recently I received a petition, created by a group of 40 mothers, stating very clearly, “We do not wish to hand our boys to the IOF” (Israeli Occupation Forces), and calling for social responsibility and the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This document is uplifting1.

“A true Israeli doesn't dodge draft!” [1] – this slogan stands at the centre of a large-scale publicity campaign in Israel. The campaign was not run by the Israeli military, and it was not aiming to add more soldiers to the dwindling ranks of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Israel has (at least de jure) universal conscription, for both men and women. But this slogan did express, and strengthen, how most Israelis understand the role of military service in the life of an Israeli – a true Israeli.

When examining militarisation and young people in this country, we must necessarily look back and take into account the hundreds of years of militarism in the area's history: land occupations and violence by European colonists, construction of the 'national heroes' to motivate patriotism, legislation of obligatory military training, exponential military spending versus the social spending diet, introduction of of military training in civilian schools, and mutation of the armed forces according to the dominant economic model. All of these measures have targeted sectors of the population that are economically vulnerable but are also potentially quite strong in political terms: the boys and girls and young people of this country. The vulnerability of this sector of the population allows militarisation to settle in comfortably and then neutralize possible pockets of resistance.