[JNV Press Release] PRESS RELEASE: Peace Activists Contradict Cameron's 'Optimist' Reports

[Maya Anne Evans]

PRESS RELEASE
Peace Activist Contradict Cameron's 'Optimist' Report of Afghanistan
Contact: 07970 274 105

While David Cameron was making his annual Christmas visit to troops in
Afghanistan , the first British peace group to visit since the 2001
invasion is living with Afghan peace makers on the ground in Kabul.

The group have so far been in Kabul for six days and within that time
have visited a refugee camp and a centre for visually impaired
children run by visually impaired volunteers, and spoken with a woman
who lost her two teenage sons in a suicide bombing attack.

They are being hosted by Afghan peace makers who live with the daily
fear of being caught up in the everyday violence of life in a warzone.

British peace delegate Maya Evans currently in Kabul says: “It’s a very
eye opening situation to live with Afghans who tell you their
everyday stories: family members killed in drone attacks, being held up
and threatened by the Taliban at provincial road blocks, losing a cousin
to a recent suicide bomb attack in Kabul. The feeling for everyday
Afghans is far from Cameron's 'optimistic' description.”

Peace delegate Beth Tichborne says: “Afghanistan is in it's 32nd year of
war, the people of Afghanistan are exhausted and depressed by the
ongoing violence. Our overall impression it that people want peace, they
want an honest government, children want to go to school, people want to
work. Britain's involvement in the ongoing war is part of making a
further barrier for ordinary Afghans to get on.”

The British peace delegation are part of Voices for Creative
Nonviolence, they are working with young Afghan peace activists who want
a nonviolent resolution to over 32 years of war.

contact: 07970 274 105

Notes for editor
1.      Maya Evans was the first person convicted of the Serious
Organized Crime and Police Act 2005 for reading the names of the Iraq
war dead opposite the cenotaph. She also headed a High Court Judicial
Review in 2010 investigating  British war crimes in Afghanistan:
complicity in the torture of Afghan detains. The judgement was a
“partial victory”.

2.      Beth Tichborne was arrested earlier this month during David
Cameron’s  turning on of the Oxford Christmas lights. She received
severe bruises at the hands of police after she held up a sign saying:
“Cameron has blood on his hands”.

  
Maya Anne Evans   
Coordinator Voices for Creative Non-Violence UK  
www.vcnvuk.wordpress.com/
07973 484 202       

>From Hastings to Kabul
www.fromhastingstokabul.wordpress.com/
01424 431 088



   

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