Against compulsory military service: solidarity with striking students in Germany!
- The Left Chapter
- 7 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Image from December 5 via X
Against compulsory military service: solidarity with striking students in Germany!
The youth wing of the Communist Party (Switzerland) - the Swiss Communist Youth - expresses its strongest solidarity with the students in Germany who went on strike December 5 against compulsory military service, a struggle that we have always supported and that binds us to our comrades abroad, especially in this worrying historical moment.
European rearmament, supported by NATO and the EU, is not only a danger to the States that belong to these warmongering organizations, but also to Switzerland, which is increasingly bowing to the dictates of Washington and Brussels, slavishly following their examples of militarization of society. In our national context, we are alarmed by the dismantling of the alternative Civil Service for conscientious objectors in favor of the military (which we are opposing by promoting a referendum on the issue); the implementation of projects to coercively involve women in the Swiss army; the sending of Swiss soldiers abroad, and the increasingly numerous “cooperations” with the Atlantic Alliance that our generals support.
In Germany the situation appears even bleaker! Militarism has in fact systematically entered schools, where educational programs are promoted that deal with issues related to war exercises, mass conscription of the population, and hostility towards anything that can be considered outside Euro-Atlantic power. Furthermore, the education sector is always among those most affected by the neoliberal cuts imposed by our respective governments. The justification of financial necessity for cutting school funding loses more and more credibility with every cent spent in favour of the Army: a veritable bottomless pit for which funding is never enough, neither in Switzerland (even though it is already oversized) nor in Germany.
In this context, we express our satisfaction and appreciation to our German comrades who have courageously chosen to mobilize: an example we intend to follow in our own country, as we already did in our demonstration on March 15 to say "No to NATO, Yes to peace". We add to these slogans our own demand for a demilitarized society that values education rather than the Army.