Defence - Ann-Britt Sternfeldt

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 Direct to closing speach

Defence – as a personal story

My name is Ann-Britt Sternfeldt, I am 39 years old, and as you know I am from Sweden. I should prefer to be somewhere else than here today, it is not an easy thing to have a trial. I should also prefer to be somewhere else than in prison, as we have been now for six months on remand, there are definitely much better places to be. But unfortunately, we have found this necessary.

I am here today because I am charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage, together with my two friends. I agree that we went in to the shipyard in Barrow-in-furness the 13^th September last year. I also agree that we brought tools with us, with intentions to dismantle and disarm a part of the Trident system, but I don’t agree that we committed any crime, or even intended to commit any crime. Instead we wanted to prevent crime, and in fact, not only one crime, but several crimes. I believe that we had the right to do that, and a duty and we take full responsibility for what we tried to do.

Hopefully you will be convinced today that I was completely justified in my actions, and that I didn’t commit any crime. In explaining this to you I would like to tell you briefly about who I am and about the way that brought me here today. You have already heard a lot of information from my two friends and I will not repeat all this, so my story will not take to long.

I grew up in a family where we talked a lot about social and political issues and these discussions had a great impact on me and grounded the views, which have followed and guided me in life. I learned from these discussions that injustice is not natural, power and political decisions cause it. I learned that violence just cause more violence, that weapons in the first place is a question about money, tools of keeping control over resources in the world, and accordingly suppressing people – not protecting them.

What of course influenced me very much was that I grew up during the cold war. The threat from the nuclear weapons was there all the time, and it was a frequent question among us young people who was going to press the red button. Who ever it should be, we felt that Sweden was very vulnerable, situated between these two big nuclear powers, and we were convinced that if something happened, Sweden would definitely be completely destroyed. We were frightened by the risk of war, but we were even more frightened by the thoughts of accidents and misunderstandings. People do mistakes all the time; it is human to fail. So it was frightening to know that someone out there could change your whole future by taken a little step in the wrong direction. When you are a child you ask your parents when it is something you don’t understand. You ask them about help and protection. But concerning nuclear weapons there was no help to get.

My first memories of nuclear weapons as a child were from pictures I saw on TV from the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb. It was like the end of time. This enormous explosion, this huge cloud, and all the victims. Civilians, men, women and children. Dead or slowly burning to death. For a child it was very hard to understand, or rather, I didn’t understand, I could just ask the question – why?

Nuclear weapon is not a regular weapon. Of course you already know that, but I would anyway like to underline that fact because it is a very important fact. Regular weapons are definitely dreadful enough, but still, nuclear weapons are something different. Something completely different. Nuclear weapons kill people who are not there where they are used. Nuclear weapons kill people who are not yet born. This is the terrible characteristic of nuclear weapons, their transcendence of space and time, their possibility to reach in to the future – hundreds of years, thousands of years. Without return.

My personal concern about taking part in our society and try to change things to the better involved me in party politics when I was sixteen. I also get involved during my late teenage years in organisations acting for human rights, animal rights, environmental issues. I was for example involved in the anti-nuclear movement during the referendum in Sweden.

The work I did during this time involved care of elderly and disabled people. In addition, I travelled around the world, and what I saw about how people lived their lives, definitely effected me.

I went to university where I studied psychology, philosophy and sociology, which meant a lot to me in my understanding of humans and society.

During this time the accident in Chernobyl happened, a tragedy that caused so much suffering. The accident also affected us in Sweden, we couldn’t eat meat from the elks, we couldn’t use the mushrooms in the forest as before. And I know that here in Britain you couldn’t eat meat from the sheep at some places, because of the radiation coming with the wind from Chernobyl. Yet this explosion was thought to be approximately that of a half-kiloton bomb, compare that with the warheads on Trident that has a yield of 100 kiloton (200 times bigger), each one of the 48 warheads on one Trident submarine.

This accident reminded me of the problems with taking national decisions about matter that effect other countries. That there are questions we need to take care of on an international level. That it must be necessary to take decisions with concern about your neighbours. It’s not allowed for me to have explosive materials in my apartment and that law is formed with concern about other people than me who own the apartment. Logical I think, because the basis of law is to protect public safety, to serve people’s needs. If it doesn’t, it fails, and need to be changed.

In fact, there are several international laws that are protecting people, created after the Second World War, and actually find nuclear weapons illegal. There were agreements among people over the whole world that we must do something so these terrible things don’t happen again, and that agreement was the reason of creating these international laws. The problem is that Britain doesn’t follow them.

The Hague and Geneva conventions say that weapons which:

• Can’t distinguish between civilian and military targets
• Cause excessive suffering
• Severely damage the environment
• Violate neutral states …..are illegal

These conventions form the humanitarian law and we have to keep in our mind that this humanitarian law is supreme, it is binding all states under any circumstances. It doesn’t matter if it is a question about the survival of the state; you still have to comply with humanitarian law. And according to ICJ there is no difference between use and threat.

Concerning the law of self-defence you are allowed to use force that is proportionate, but nuclear weapons are not proportionate. If someone is trying to kill me, I am not allowed to do something in self-defence that, except stopping the killer, also hurt ten other innocent people. Because that is not proportionate.

With concern about these terrible characteristics of nuclear weapons there was an international agreement made 1968 about global disarmament. The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Britain has signed this treaty, Britain has participated fully in these decisions, but still 31 years later the disarmament is not made. Instead there has been a major escalation in Britain’s nuclear war fighting capability with the Trident system. Compared with previous Polaris, Trident has independently targetable warheads, far greater range and is far more accurate.

If I sign a treaty I have to take responsibility for that, so I can’t understand why a government doesn’t have responsibility for what they sign.

After my studies at university I became a social worker, and at that time I also became a councillor in my home village, elected for the Green Party, during two periods. For about three years I had a teenager boy living in my home, I was as you say a foster parent. To have this complete responsibility for another human is one of my biggest experiences in life.

In my work as a councillor and in my own readings and investigations, I became aware of the ways democracy works, or doesn’t work, the way in which society is constructed and ruled, I became more aware of the relationship between poor countries and rich countries. I got to know that people, even children, worked 12-14 hours a day under bad conditions, that people were poisoned by chemicals on plantations, and that, in fact, hundreds of thousands died every year because of that. And all this – to bring us in the rich countries – coffee, bananas – to what we called – reasonable prices. These people’s suffering contributed to our welfare. What I got to know bothered me, and I felt that the work I did was not enough. I felt an obligation for these people who don’t have any possibility to make changes, when all their time is used to just survive. And of course they can’t do anything about nuclear weapons.

As I saw the democracy as a cornerstone in our society, and that we need to improve this structure to have possibilities to make changes, I increased my involvement in democratic issues. I worked particularly hard before the election in deciding whether Sweden should join European union or not, but unfortunately Sweden became a member. I was worried. I studied how the European democratic process worked, I went down to Brussels and observed debates of members of the parliament. And I don’t know what I had expected, but I was shocked at how unrepresentative those debates were, I was shocked at how little influence any citizen of any country could have.

At this stage, my experiences told me very clearly that the opportunities to make the voices from the people heard were very limited. Even if the majority of the people, the majority of the nations, wanted to get rid of the nuclear weapons, their opinion and their wish had a very little chance to influence this European structure. I also understood that the exploitation of poorer countries, especially Third World countries, would definitely continue and presumably be worse in this hierarchy where power had been accumulated together with nuclear weapons. So, as my possibilities to make changes through the traditional democratic process now had decreased, I understood that I had to do something else if I seriously wanted to take responsibility.

At this time I worked with a social project and one day we saw the film about Mahatma Gandhi’s life. Of course I knew about him before but I hadn’t seen the film. It made a great impression on me. I saw the possibilities in non-violent resistance, in how ordinary people could make big changes, without any weapons, by just using themselves. This film inspired me to go to a meeting about non-violence in Gothenburg in early spring 1997. This was the first time I came in direct contact with the ploughshare movement. I had heard about them before, that they disarmed weapons, but I didn’t know that they also acted in solidarity with the poor and that interested me very much. I went to some other meetings and I understood that the intentions in this movement were very serious and well considered. What really impressed me was the big respect for democracy and the law.

I heard about the international campaign against Britain’s nuclear weapons and I thought it was a very good initiative. I understood that to have any chance to get rid of the nuclear weapons something like this was necessary. To be a lot of people from different countries who joined together seemed to me like a possible attempt to achieve to stop the use of this particular Trident system. Through this pressure from ordinary people, prepared to take action, if other means didn’t work, together with the resistance against nuclear weapons that already existed among people and nations, I believed that it was possible that the British government would meet for negotiations about disarmament. And if the government refused I believed it was possible for ordinary people to disarm the weapons themselves.

At this time I came across the memories from my childhood, pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together on a video called Prophecy. These pictures is absolutely a reason why I am here today, they have made such an impression on me, so therefore I would like to show this video for you. (I was not allowed to show the video.)

I went to the Gambia for two months to visit schools that the charity organisation I worked for had built, and to visit my godchild. I travelled around the whole country and I faced what I never faced so closed before. Poverty. Real poverty. And I realised that we were in a hurry, there was no time for slowly reforms. The children I met, children I could touch, they were starving now, they were dying now in this very moment when I met them. And this reality is not natural; it’s caused by power and political decisions. This reality is today ultimately protected by nuclear weapons. These children can’t change the unjust world order and these children don’t have a chance either to do anything about the threat from nuclear weapons as weapons of mass destruction. But we have, we who are the privileged people. I believe that I have a responsibility for not only my neighbourhood and myself, I have a responsibility for these starving children. I am a part in this global economic system.

I had a book with me in the Gambia, which influenced me a lot. The Path of Resistance by Per Herngren, it is in the exhibition. This book widened my knowledge about that the most cruel things in the world have been committed in the name of obedience. The Holocaust during Second World War couldn’t happen if it wasn’t that people obeyed unjust and criminal orders. We have to remember that in Nazi Germany, the orders given were in fact legal under German law at the time, instead it was the rest of the world that served as a larger community and judged what happened as crimes. And accordingly, after the Nuremberg trial there was an international agreement stated in the Nuremberg principles that say that: "citizens are responsible to resist if a government violate international law otherwise they will be accessories to the government’s crime". And to fail is also an action. A crime of obedience. In fact, the ICJ has confirmed that the Nuremberg Charter applies to nuclear weapons.

I came back to Sweden in January 1998. I was really struggling with my fears, with my own wish to live a pleasant and ordinary life, and with what I actually thought was right. In May I made up my mind. Through all my works and experiences I couldn’t find any other way to go than to take part in a ploughshare action if I wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. And I thought it was absolutely necessary and that I had a personal responsibility in trying to do that. Every minute we are standing here something can happen that can destroy humanity forever, every minute children die because of the terrible world order that the nuclear weapons protect.

So in May last year (1998) I started with preparations together with my friends. We spent a lot of time together and we discussed a lot of different kind of subjects. This was a serious matter and had to be taken very seriously. We talked about ethic, about what is right and wrong. Of course we had lot of discussions about if what we planned to do was the right thing or if there was anything else we could do. We talked about non-violence as a necessary mean as we all have violence inside us. Humans are all the same, we have feelings of fear, revenge, and other emotions that can lead us to do cruel things in special circumstances and that’s why it is necessary to use non-violence in trying to change things. We can’t wait to get rid of weapons until the human has been a more friendly and peaceful creature, because that will not really happen. The weapons are creating the violence, and as long as we have them the history will continue to repeat itself. We talked about our fears for prison and what we could do to prepare us for that and to support each other. We thought it was rather likely that we could end up in prison, we realised that guards and polices wouldn’t at first understand that we were no criminals. We also had a meeting for friends and relatives where they could talk about what they felt about our plans. There were a lot more we discussed but I just wanted to mention a few.

During this time I also read a lot of material I hadn’t read before, and I was amazed by what I got to know. I have had my view clear for a long time that nuclear weapons are tools for keeping control over resources in the world, but I could never imagine that a government would openly agree about that. But the book Tactical Trident by Milan Rai showed me on to the British Defence Review where I could clearly read that Britain threatens force to cause other states to follow, or not follow certain political or economic paths. And that is not legal. Deterrence, if at all necessary, should be deterrence from an act of war – not deterrence from actions which one opposes.

But Chapter Four of the SDR (Strategic Defence Review) actually opens by saying: "The SDR has conducted a rigorous re-examination of our deterrence requirements. This does not depend on the size of other nation’s arsenals, but on the minimum necessary to deter any threat to our vital interests". These vital interests are, clearly explained in Chapter Two in SDR as trade, sea routes and investments abroad, especially in Third world countries. So in this sense, in declaring the use of nuclear weapons for political ends, the SDR is obviously illegal. "The use or threatened use of violence for political ends" is the definition of a crime called Terrorism and it this case it is a question about State Terrorism.

I believe that if you break in to a house, if you damage a fence, if you break some local law, without harming anyone, to prevent a terrorist to commit a terrible crime, I believe that you are completely justified. In the same way as I believe that we were completely justified in our attempts to prevent crimes.

After what I have said here today I hope you understand that to use nuclear weapons is to commit several crimes against humanity, to produce and deploy nuclear weapons is to prepare for several crimes against humanity.

The Tokyo war crimes Tribunal declare that "Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of crimes". I had the knowledge and I believe I had an opportunity to do something, so to not commit a crime – by passivity, by obedience – I tried to disarm the Trident system.

It is absolutely necessary that we see the truth about nuclear weapons, and that we try to get rid of them, all of us. When the nuclear weapons have been used in a larger scale there is no idea to have a tribunal to decide whether a crime was committed or not. It will be too late.

Closing speech

I was in Israel when I was younger and I have a very special memory from that journey, about machine guns surrounding us wherever we went. At the coffee shops there were machine guns on the tables, when we went to the beach, there were soldiers with machine guns beside us. Very frightening. But more frightening was that we got used to it.

Unfortunately we get used to many things we believe are wrong, and even dangerous. But we can't allow us to get used to nuclear weapons; they are, as we know no regular weapons. We know that victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still suffering from the radiation. Every minute someone can make a mistake, someone can misunderstand, or someone can give an order that it’s time to use nuclear weapons in Serbia. It doesn’t matter who was right or wrong from the beginning – the result will be the same – our future will be destroyed.

Both high militaries and scientists say that we just have been lucky. There are so big risks for accidents and mistakes that they warn us with deep concern. And they warn us because the outcome will be a disaster. And remember, the time before the accident in Chernobyl didn’t prove that an accident wouldn’t happen. So we need to stop these weapons of mass destruction now as soon as possible.

So our action was absolutely about emergency, it can’t be considered as enough to write letters to MP:s or to demonstrate when our whole future is on stake every minute. So, in this matter I see as my only crime that I didn’t take action before.

The British government is not listening to its people, because if they did, they should have disarmed the nuclear weapons a long time ago. We know from Gallup Opinion Poll that the majority of the British people don’t want nuclear weapons. It’s disrespectful of a government to not listen to its people – that is not a real democracy. And, as we know, the majority of the people in the whole world don’t want nuclear weapons.

I believe it is absolutely irrelevant to say that if you accept our action as justified, it could on the same grounds justify the bomb in London. The person who arranged the bomb was acting in a way that is completely reverse to our action. Non-violence that is our method, as you have heard about before, is the opposite of violence. We are acting in a tradition of respecting and uphold human rights. To kill people is not to take concern about human rights.

And as you know we are acting in a democratic tradition with great respect for the law. To be open, to stay and take the consequences is to respect the law, to run away, to hide – that is to take the law in you own hand. We don’t believe that anyone has the right to do that. We believe it is important to have a dialogue, with hope of an agreement – that is one of our goals. So therefore it is a misunderstanding by Miss Nichols who said yesterday that if more people do what we did it would lead to chaos. I will not.

In this case I’m not just following what a lot of people believe is right, I am in fact following politically decided laws that are binding every state. It is the British government who commits a crime when it doesn’t follow these laws, not me and my friends.

I have the right to break a local law, even a national law, to uphold these international laws – in the same way as many people should have done during the Second World War. I also have the right to commit a smaller crime to prevent a bigger crime, I even have a duty to do that. And as you know from our evidence, nuclear weapons are illegal in several ways according to international humanitarian law.

The British government is acting illegal in several ways. They are, among other things, prepared to use nuclear weapons for political goals, they actually threaten to use the weapons for this purpose. The government officially admits that they use what they call sub-strategic Trident, to prevent other countries from having access to their own resources. They are prepared to use nuclear weapons to, as they say, "deter any threat to our vital interests".

In explaining what this can mean I will tell you about a personal experience.

When I was in the Gambia we found a very nice restaurant situated at the beach. We went back several times and one day the owner said that we couldn’t have any fish for our lunch because the fishermen died the day before. There had been high waves and the boat turned upside down and the fishermen drowned. Because of the abuse by European fleet of West African waters, the fishermen have to go more far out on the sea to get any fish. But their boats are not prepared to be out on the open sea, and they can’t afford to buy better boats. They can’t afford to buy life jackets.

This is one of many consequences of keeping control over vital interests, over resources. And this control is kept by the threat from nuclear weapons, officially declared in SDR.

I don’t see people as enemies. It is our fears that are our enemies, our common enemies. We all have these fears, more or less. Probably more, because we have a very obedient culture. We don’t really do what we believe is right, we do what we think we must do. At the police station several of the officers said that we were right in what we did. But they still locked us in because they did their work. Officers in the prison said to me that they agreed with what I have done, but they still handcuffed me and put me in a cell. They are just doing their job. And that is how it is – I am not blaming anyone. All of us mostly do what we think we must do, not what we believe is right. It is the same with me, I have always been very obedient, unfortunately.

Today, members of the jury, you have the possibility to say what you believe is right, in acting as the conscience of the society. No matter what His Honour is advising you to do, you have the right to make the choice you prefer. And remember, you have a special responsibility, you have to be absolutely sure that we didn’t have any lawful excuse if you are going to find us guilty – if you are just a little unsure you must acquit us.

The law in this court might say that you have to find us guilty. Take in consideration that there are other courts that will not, i.e. the ICJ.

An acquittal in this case will give hope to many people. It will give hope about that it is possible for ordinary people to get their voices heard and accordingly giving hope about a better world, a safer future for or children.

An acquittal will strengthen the democracy, it will strengthen the international law and it will strengthen the respect for human rights. A guilty verdict will do the opposite, it will say that we shall not follow international law, it will say that what happened in Hiroshima was right and that we should not respect the human rights.

So do remember now when you are deciding the verdict that the choice is yours, completely yours. The responsibility is yours, and I do hope that you take it very seriously, as you represent the conscience of the society, the conscience of the people.