 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(February 2018) |
Milan Rai (born 1965) [1] is a British writer and anti-war activist from Hastings. He was co-editor with anti-war artist Emily Johns of the magazine Peace News until autumn 2024.
Rai first became politically active in the campaign against Pershing II and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles - nuclear weapons scheduled to be deployed in Western Europe in the late 1980s.
Along with fellow activist Maya Evans, he was arrested on 25 October 2005 next to the Cenotaph war memorial in London, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of civilians by then killed in Iraq in the course of the Iraq war.
Rai was convicted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) for organising an illegal demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament.
In December 2006, Rai and Evans lost an appeal against their convictions. For refusing to pay a fine of £350 (and £150 court costs), Rai was sent to Wandsworth prison in south London for 14 days on 23 August 2007. [2] [3] This was his fourth prison sentence. Previous prison sentences (14 days in Pentonville in 1995, seven days in Wormwood Scrubs in 1996, and 28 days in Lewes in 2005) were all imposed for similar protests.
Also taken into account in his 2007 sentencing was a further fine of £100, imposed for organising and participating in protests during the "No More Fallujahs" tent city demonstration in Parliament Square. Rai's fine for these offences was imposed in May 2007 - Maya Evans was his co-defendant. Evans is best known for being the first person to be convicted of participating in an unauthorized demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament under SOCPA. Rai was the first person to be convicted of organizing an unauthorized demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament. Evans and Rai were also, through their May 2007 convictions, the first people to be convicted in the same trial of organizing and participating in unauthorized demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament - at different parts of the same two-day event.
Their appeal against their SOCPA convictions was heard before the European Court of Human Rights (as of February 2009).
As well as being a co-ordinator of anti-war group Justice Not Vengeance, Rai was co-editor with his partner and anti-war artist Emily Johns of the London-based monthly magazine Peace News . Their co-editorship ran from March 2007 to Autumn 2024. Rai was a Peace News seller while at public school, selling copies to peace activist and poet Stephen Hancock, later a co-editor of the magazine.
Rai's primary organizational affiliations have been with the British Ploughshares movement (1988–1993); ARROW (Active Resistance to the Roots of War; 1990–2003); the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND; 1992–1997); Voices in the Wilderness UK (1998–2003) [4] and Justice Not Vengeance (2003–present).
The Ploughshares movement is an international campaign of direct citizen disarmament of nuclear and other military equipment. ARROW was a London-based affinity group which organized mass actions and carried out a wide variety of campaigns, including a weekly vigil (1991–2003) against the economic sanctions - and then the impending war - on Iraq. CND is Europe's largest peace organization, devoted to British unilateral nuclear disarmament. Voices in the Wilderness UK, which Rai founded in 1998, a British arm of Voices in the Wilderness in the US, began life as a campaign of direct action against the economic sanctions on Iraq - breaking unjust laws by carrying children's medicines and other critical civilian goods to Iraq without an export licence. It developed a research function, and became an important part of the British anti-war scene. Justice Not Vengeance, which Rai co-founded in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is an anti-war campaigning group dealing with an array of issues around the "war on terror".
Rai has been awarded the Frank Cousins Peace award from the Transport and General Workers' Union (shared, 1993), [5] and the Peace Award of the Christian peace group Pax Christi (2007). [6]
Rai has authored several books:
He has contributed to books including:
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
Beginning in late 2002 and continuing after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, large-scale protests against the Iraq War were held in many cities worldwide, often coordinated to occur simultaneously around the world. After the biggest series of demonstrations, on February 15, 2003, New York Times writer Patrick Tyler claimed that they showed that there were two superpowers on the planet: the United States and worldwide public opinion.
A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s, the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814).
Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common security and peaceful resolution to international conflicts.
Brian William Haw was a British protester and peace campaigner who lived for almost ten years in a peace camp in London's Parliament Square from 2001, in a protest against UK and US foreign policy. He began the Parliament Square Peace Campaign before the September 11 attacks, and became a symbol of the anti-war movement over the policies of both the United Kingdom and the United States in Afghanistan and later Iraq. At the 2007 Channel 4 Political Awards he was voted Most Inspiring Political Figure. Haw died of cancer in Berlin, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
The Committee of 100 was a British anti-war group. It was set up in 1960 with a hundred public signatories by Bertrand Russell, Ralph Schoenman, Michael Scott, and others. Its supporters used mass nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to achieve their aims.
Peace News (PN) is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.
Pax Christi International is an international Catholic peace movement. The Pax Christi International website declares its mission is "to transform a world shaken by violence, terrorism, deepening inequalities, and global insecurity".
On September 24, 2005, many protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War took place.
John Dear is an American Catholic priest and peace activist. He has been arrested 85 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice, nuclear weapons.
Maya (Anne) Evans is a councillor on Hastings Borough Council representing Hollington ward in East Sussex. Since being first elected in 2018, Maya has been Armed Forces champion of Hastings, led a working group to reduce single-use plastics, and appointed cabinet member for climate change, natural environment and leisure. During the pandemic she held a senior position within the council; this ensured Hollington was always prioritised and received essential services. Maya is currently cabinet member for Environment and was described as the ‘climate change champion’ in 2019.
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is a group of academics, students and professionals of Iranian and non-Iranian backgrounds formed to oppose sanctions or military action against Iran by the United States.
Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.
Louis Vitale, OFM, was an American Franciscan friar, peace activist, and a co-founder of Nevada Desert Experience. His religious beliefs led him to participate in civil disobedience actions at peace demonstrations and acts of religious witness over 40 years. In the name of peace, Vitale has been arrested more than 400 times. Vitale stated that Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. provided him with inspiration.
The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) is a global coalition of 160 groups in 33 countries. It was formed in 2003 in Berlaar, Belgium to promote a campaign based on reliable information on depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Until 2018 it was based in Manchester, England, then the office has been transferred from Manchester to Berlin.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.
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