I regard these issues as most important. I feel that non-violent solutions are little researched, under-promoted and wrongly stereotyped as 'doing little or nothing'. Thus they are funded and implemented very inadequately. Over the years I devoted some effort to the pursuit of justice and peace through non-violent means. Examples include :

• I am a member of MEDACT (the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War). I sat on the management committee of the IPPNW-designated journal 'Medicine, Conflict and Survival' and had the priviledge to assist its greatly gifted editor Douglas Holdstock.
• All Greek-born men have to perform National Service for the Greek M.o.D. I decided to register Conscientious Objection. This action claimed my own right to my beliefs about peace and justice; it was also a protest at the militaristic means through which our societies seek security. I was treated in a punitive way, serving 16 months instead of 6 and still having to work for the Navy. On the other hand individual officers treated me as well as they could, which I respect and appreciate. I sometimes contribute to the Association of Greek Conscientious Objectors.

My publications on Peace and conflict are here.

I have always regarded war as the ultimate expression of humankind's most fearful, murderous and destructive tendencies. I am of the opinion that these tendencies are based on (but do not arise deterministically from) drives we all posess. In the early 1990s I was inspired on this by the great psychoanalyst and anti-nuclear activitst Hannah Segal. Personally I observed violence among my peers ever since my childhood. In teenage years this was mostly psychological violence, bullying, efforts to humiliate the other person. Violence stretches from these 'everyday' forms up tto the threat of nuclear holocaust. The most extreme form of institutionalised violence are the 'armed forces', people trained to kill professionally at industrial scale, whom I could never possibly support. I am proud to be a pacifist, that is to struggle for justice and peace through non-violent means.

The pusuit of security and freedom through armaments and killing is extremely expensive and dangerous (as well as, in my view, deeply immoral). It is the duty of each citizen to work hard to implement much better alternatives (e.g. Peace journalism). Each citizen must work in the areas and ways that are closest to her/his experience and expertise. I joined the Association for Cypriot, Greek and Turkish Affairs, a UK based group offering academic seminars and analyses to help with the conflict between these three countries. As an example of my involvement, I gave a seminar entitled "National Identity and the Media: Psychological Mechanisms Involved".

In 1984, at the age of 18, I went to England to study but also to avoid the 4-year-long imprisonment which was then the punishment for refusing to serve the army in Greece. I soon joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Peace Pledge Union, PPU. As a medic however I found MEDACT, the UK affiliate of International Physicians Against Nuclear War, IPPNW one of the most appropriate NGOs to support and work for. I have been assistant to the Editor of the journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival and I have written several articles for it (see the publications page).

In the year 2000 I returned to Greece for family reasons. I presented myself and applied for Conscientious Objector status. I was briefly arrested and released, but it took them 8 months to process my application and 10 months to call me up for service. During that period of 'in limbo' I helped out other Greek COs. The terms of the despicable Greek law 2510/97 on Conscientious Objection are so punitive that I was forced to compromise - i.e. to serve in a Naval hospital as a CO. This was still serving the military and still under the Ministry of Defense: the most humiliating time of my life. When I finished I continued my peace work - for example supporting Greeks who were brought to trial because of refusing to serve the military.

I have also given presentations such as -

• On the Effectiveness of Non-violent methods in the conflict of FYRO Macedonia, organised by the group "World Citizens for Peace" (in Greek)

• Demilitarisation: Alternatives to Depending on the Military and Yielding to their Demands, talk to the Seminar on the Balkans in the European Social Forum, Florence, Nov. 2002. (Click here for short text)



Demilitarisation

ALTERNATIVES TO DEPENDING ON THE MILITARY

& YIELDING TO THEIR DEMANDS

Dr. Michael Moutoussis  - November 2002

In our era of massive militarisation of our societies we have to look far to realise that processes of demilitarisation are in fact at work amongst our industries of death.

Demilitarisation is the diminution within society of the role of personel and aparatus kept for its potential to kill others. Many social processes contribute to demilitarisation, although each currently coexists with massive phenomena serving militarism :

• The development of just economic structures of interdependency, best served by peace and stability (contrasting with i. economic powers served by expoitative control of groups of people and their resources ii. the armament industry itself, which seeks to create demand for weapons).
• A political culture whereby legitimate popular frustrations and fears are presented in proportion and many alternatives are opened up for their solution (vs. one where leaders and 'opinion makers' amplify such frustrations and fears to justify killing).
• An education, entertainment culture , historical research and media emphasising the creative management of conflicts (vs. structures whereby killing for the sake of one's own people can be indulged in as noble, heroic and historically necessary).
• Research, legitimisation and implementation on non-violent methods such as human rights observation and non-violent opposition to totalitarianism (vs. funding R&D of new means to kill).


Members of most social groups are entirely out of touch with the true feelings, the true distress their group has caused others, while they are acutely aware of others' "wrongdoing", a situation that greatly impairs demilitarisation. In some areas this situation has just started to be challenged in the form of awareness of the historical abuse of children, women and ethnic minorities. Awareness of the gravity and endurance of each social group's own crimes is still quite a rare - though existent - phenomenon.

The above processes - from a fair economics to the develoment of effective, non-violent struggle - can empower us as peoples not to depend on the military and not to yield to demands of "allies" and "enemies" alike. First and foremost however we need a deeply alternative, deeply human understanding of badness, of wrong-doing in our world. We need to open up all our usual attributions and explanatory theories, including those that we all share in the progressive Left. I ask you to work hard to really understand all those who stand opposite us, who stand against us, as fully human.


 

In the long term I intend to continue this work to the best of my abilities.