Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021
By Kelly Lundeen
In Germany this year, 41 peace activists have been put on trial for protest actions at Germany’s Büchel air force base, where the US stations 20 of its B61 H-bombs.
Nuclear abolitionists Dennis DuVall, a US Veteran for Peace now living in Dresden, and Margriet Bos, a Catholic Worker from Amsterdam, go on trial Dec. 7, 2020 in Cochem, charged with trespass and damage to the base’s fence. The trials will draw wide attention because a Dutch national television crew is reporting.
Over a dozen resisters including DuVall are appealing their lower court convictions, and hope to win a judicial order condemning Germany’s “sharing” of US nuclear weapons—a policy that many contend violates binding international treaty law.
Nukewatch staffer and Quarterly editor John LaForge, who was similarly charged last year for actions in 2018 and 2019, is scheduled for trial February 1 in Cochem.
Just before trial, Margriet said in part, “Along with North American peace activists Susan Crane, Ralph Hutchison and Andrew Lanier, I entered the nuclear military base in Büchel to hinder and frustrate the machine of death and destruction that’s preparing a third world war with thermonuclear bombs. We cut the fence and walked towards the runway to prevent the Tornados from flying. Tornado jet fighters practice every weekday and expel 12,000 kilos of Co2 every hour they fly, the same amount as driving a diesel car nonstop for 62.5 days.”
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