|
Indiscriminate Warfare
& Disarmament Efforts
Support Ban on Landmines
Background Information On Legislation Relating To
HELP END CIVILIAN TOLL FROM
The international community has come to view landmines as illegitimate. Some 150 nations have signed the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel (AP) landmines. Hundreds of non-governmental organizations including numerous religious groups around the world have also endorsed this treaty. Many of the same organizations have raised money to help rid some of the most contaminated areas of residual landmines and provide support for the innocent victims of landmines.
The United States has not signed the treaty. The position of our government is that landmines do, in fact, serve a useful military purpose. The demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea is used as one (the primary) such example. While acknowledging the validity of the US position (i.e., that such weapons may serve some limited military purpose in very selected areas), the fact of the matter is that these weapons have almost always been used to terrorize civilian populations. Whatever military value landmines may have, their cost in civilian casualties and long-term damage to the landscape clearly outweighs any military justification.
Last year, 2006, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter introduced bipartisan legislation, (Victim-Activated Landmine Abolition Act of 2006) to prohibit the United States from procuring landmines and other victim-activated weapons. Unfortunately, the bill was not acted on and was cleared at the end of the legislative session. It needs to be reintroduced.
TAKE ACTION NOW! Please contact Michigan’s two senators (Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow) and urge them to introduce similar legislation next year.
You can learn more about both Senate bills on-line here.
Sample letters are also available on line here: Contact
our
Michigan senators... Sample-Letter.doc.
The Victim-Activated Landmine Abolition Act would be an important step in the direction of moving the U.S. away from future use of landmines and toward eventual ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty. The issue is not partisan; it is humanitarian. As the historical use of landmines makes clear, these indiscriminate weapons frequently kill and maim innocent civilians, often long after active hostilities have ceased.
The Peace and Justice Committee strongly supports efforts to secure a U. S. commitment to sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which would eliminate the scourge of these morally unacceptable weapons that do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians or between times of war and times of peace. Moral teaching on war insists that noncombatant immunity be respected and that the use of force be discriminate. Landmines clearly fall outside the scope of this requirement.
Members of the St. Francis Peace and Justice Committee invite you to look at the details of this important piece of legislation. We invite you to write to both of our senators and urge them to support this effort.
USCCB POSITION: USCCB has strongly supported efforts to secure a U. S. commitment to sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which would eliminate the scourge of these morally unacceptable weapons that do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians or between times of war and times of peace. Catholic moral teaching on just war insists that noncombatant immunity be respected and that the use of force be discriminate. For more than a decade USCCB has joined the Holy See and Catholic bishops from around the world in calling for a ban on landmines as indiscriminate and insidious weapons.
You can learn more about both Senate bills on-line here.
Sample letters are also available on line here: Contact
our
Michigan senators... Sample-Letter.doc.
|
|
Sample letters are also available here: |
