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Port of Call |
LAST UPDATE August 21, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| July 2, 2005 |
Le Havre, France – Le Mouvement de la Paix (Act for Peace) |
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| The picturesque coastline of Normandy, France. |
In 1970 an activist group in France called Le Mouvement de la Paix (Act for Peace) protested France’s testing of nuclear devices in the South Pacific. The group—formed in World War Two by scientists loyal to the Resistance—and its partners demanded that the French government formally admit the testing as a crime and pay compensation to the people of the South Pacific region. This advocacy inspired Le Mouvement de la Paix to broadly support global disarmament, widening its network with international organizations including groups in Japan appealing for “No More Hiroshima/Nagasaki”. |
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| Peace Boat and Le Mouvement de la Paix members engaged in discussion outside Centre de Loisirs Rene Cance. |
Japan and France have directly been affected by nuclear devices—Japan by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and France with its nuclear bomb testing. Both nations also use nuclear energy to power their industries. Thus many organizations within Japan and France are keen to address issues concerning disarmament and responsible handling of nuclear energy. With common interests in mind, Peace Boat participants journeyed to Gonfreville from the port of Le Havre to engage in dialogue with members of Le Mouvement de la Paix. |
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| Uli Jäger from the University of Tübingen is a member of the German international student (IS) team onboard Peace Boat’s 49th voyage. |
Gonfreville is located in the northwest region of Normandy, the site of the largest seaborne invasion during World War II. On June 6, 1944 thousands of allied soldiers from Britain, Canada and the United States stormed the beaches of German-occupied Normandy in what is now called D-Day. After the war, the town of Gonfreville provided refuge to hundreds of displaced people who had once lived in the neighboring area of Le Havre, a town destroyed during the war. And Gonfreville is where the Centre de Loisirs Rene Cance houses Le Mouvement de la Paix. Here, programmes and workshops focus on the history of the war, continuing issues about nuclear disarmament and conflict, as well as current issues, such as unemployment, that directly concern the local population. |
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| A Peace Boat participant presents paper cranes representing peace to the Mayor of Gonfreville. |
The center also nurtures a youth development center. Working in partnership with Gonfreville’s city hall, the youth center develops international youth exchange programs between France and countries in North Africa. The programs focus on refugee camps and agricultural development projects in Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara. In 2001 an exchange program incorporated issues of conflict, nuclear disarmament and peace education when they invited children from a refugee camp in Morocco to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The mayor of Gonfreville noted, “For peace to succeed we need to gather people with different religions, philosophies and political opinions for dialogue and understanding”. Le Mouvement de la Paix feels a strong kinship with Peace Boat’s objectives of promoting peace awareness and pro-active peace initiatives to prevent war and violent conflicts in the future. |
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| Ippei Yuki, a playwriter from Japan, and Global University students from Peace Boat performed a poem and song about peace. |
Both Le Mouvement de la Paix and Peace Boat are anti-nuclear and anti-arms (both small and large arms), yet France is increasing its military budget as is Japan for its self-defense force. Further, France now has the third largest arms expenditures in the world. And despite signing the NPT (Nonproliferation Treaty) after World War II, France raised its military budget by 2.1% in 2005. This jeopardizes the validity of the NPT, an international law aimed at disarmament. “We want to wake up French society to these issues, because many think peace is normal even though a large portion of the federal budget goes to the military,” voiced the mayor of Gonfreville. |
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| A peace banner with signed messages from Peace Boat was given to members of Le Mouvement de la Paix. |
Disarmament is not the only issue of concern. France relies on nuclear power as a source of domestic energy. Cherbourg, a town in Normandy near Gonfreville, is the location of a power plant that converts plutonium into uranium. Le Mouvement de la Paix is aware that nuclear energy is an important energy source for civil use, but its concern lies in the potential abuse of this energy by the military. As such Le Mouvement de la Paix is not against nuclear energy as a whole, but only against its use for military purposes. If this power source is abolished as a whole, as some NGOs have advocated, “it will take another century to find an adequate substitute”. Instead Le Mouvement de la Paix has partnered with similar organizations to produce ways to keep the nuclear energy program a public enterprise. There is a real danger that the nuclear energy program will be released from government control into privatized hands, where profit is a much higher concern than security.
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| Peace Boat is featured in Le Mémorial est un muse de la paix, pour la paix, a peace museum in Caen, France. |
In relation to Le Mouvement de la Paix’s efforts, Peace Boat participants also visited Le Mémorial est un muse de la paix, pour la paix (A museum about and for peace) in Caen. This unique museum was conceived by Dr. Johan Galtung, one of the pioneers of peace research and peace studies. Displays feature exhibits about peace movements that address worldwide issues, including north/south disparity, major environmental hazards, proliferation and dissemination of nuclear weapons, encroachments upon economic, social and cultural or other rights. |
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