Campaigning against Nato in Norrbotten, Sweden: Photo by Ofog.

Anna Andersson on the Swedish campaign for a weapons free world.

The sound of the plane flying over the main street was deafening. People watching the beautiful wedding ceremony froze. Seconds later, bombs were dropped. The table with the wedding cake fell over, guests screamed as the bride and the groom fell to the ground.

We reconstructed the event carefully, borrowed the wedding dress from a second-hand store and stayed up all night to make the three-layered cake. An onlooker might have mistaken it to be a real wedding, until the recorded sounds of fighter jets and missile strikes echoed through the streets.

This is Sweden, this is no war zone. We have no coalition forces here, dropping bombs on innocent civilians and blasting away guests gathered at a wedding ceremony. But, in Afghanistan, a joyous wedding party can quickly become the scene of murder and mayhem. According to a recent report in the Guardian, more than 600 Afghan civilians were killed by Nato and US airstrikes this year. The figure has almost doubled from last year and tripled from the year before. In Serbia, at least 489 civilians were killed during Nato’s bombing campaign in 1999, as estimated by Human Rights Watch.

The largest military alliance in the world is often touted by its backers as the defender of democracy and freedom. In truth, it spreads death and destruction around the globe to ensure the neoliberal geopolitical interests of its member countries.

This June, Nato came to Sweden. It was an eight-day aerial bombing exercise involving troops and fighter jets from ten countries. While Sweden itself is not a member of the alliance, it hosted the exercise in the northern part of the country, Norrbotten. For Ofog, the Swedish grassroots network of peace activists campaigning for a demilitarised world, it was time to intervene and disrupt the bombing in our own backyard.

While the global military-industrial-complex (Nato being one of its key players) propagates that the path to security and peace lies with military solutions, Ofog strives for a world based on democracy, human rights and justice, where real security of the people will be achieved through ending poverty and discrimination. As an activist group, we adhere to the principles of nonviolence and civil disobedience. We borrow our name from an archaic Swedish word that can be translated to mischief or disobedience.

In Norrbotten, a little mischief against militarism was at play.

One afternoon, outside the Nato base, members of Ofog and other peace activists from across Europe formed a clown army. We dressed up in military uniforms, red clown noses and saucepan hats. Then, to expose the ridiculous face of jingoism championed by Nato, we marched towards the gates of the base, carrying rainbow-coloured feather dusters.

During the eight days of the Nato exercise titled Loyal Arrow, our own exercise titled Royal Error was in full swing. We entered both the bombing range and the military airport used for the Nato exercise and disrupted the bomb-dropping for sometime. On June 10, five of our activists were detained by the police from the bombing range near Vidsel airbase in Norrbotten. Before their detention, the activists spent five hours at the range.

It is hard to measure the exact outcome of our direct actions and demonstrations in Norrbotten. We will never be certain of exactly how much we managed to disturb the exercise by entering the bombing range, the airport or blockading the bases. But, one thing we can surely confirm: Nato’s preparation for war crimes did not go unchallenged.

***

My heart was rushing, the window finally gave way. The moment I had been thinking about every night for the last couple of weeks finally arrived. We climbed in through the window into the factory and saw the weapons placed on metal stands. I put on my protective glasses and held up my hammer with a firm grip. It was time.

Autumn of 2008, five of us split into two groups and entered two weapons factories in Sweden. One in Eskiltuna, owned by Saab Bofors Dynamics and the other in Karlskoga, owned by BAE Systems. While Bofors is Sweden’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems — successor to British Aerospace — is the largest in Europe. In 2007, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Bofors made a profit of $287 million while BAE Systems made $1800 million, from their worldwide sales of weapons.

During our disarmament actions that night, with our hammers we managed to destroy fourteen Carl-Gustaf grenade launchers and parts of nine howitzer artillery systems. The grenade launchers were made for the US army and the howitzers were to be exported to India.

This was part of Avrusta (Swedish word for disarm), a nonviolent campaign working towards global disarmament. Avrusta was launched by members of Ofog in August 2008. Prior to our direct actions at the factories, our activism included peace camps, media campaigning and lobbying with the arms industry.

Since the beginning of this decade, Swedish weapons export has increased fourfold and since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the sale of weapons to the US army has doubled. Among the recipients of Swedish arms are countries that are infamous perpetrators of serious human rights violations. The fact that Sweden sanctions large scale military violence in other countries is nothing less than hypocrisy, is absolutely unethical and goes against our own foreign policy, our own rules about arms export, international law and human rights treaties that Sweden has signed.

As cases were filed following our actions at the Saab Bofors Dynamics factory, the court found me guilty and sentenced me to four months in prison. In its eyes, I violated “the law of protection of areas important to society and inflicted gross damage.” In addition to the prison sentence, Bofors demanded 1.2 million Swedish krona, as compensation. Money I never dream of owning during my lifetime and would not pay anyway.

Four months in a Swedish prison is not so bad when I think about all the people around the globe who keep resisting, keep fighting for a better world in much harsher conditions than mine: people who risk torture, disappearance and murder for standing up for truth and justice.

***

It is not the authority of the leaders or the greed of corporations that sustains power, ultimately, it is the obedience of the people who approve their actions. Civil disobedience is a crucial political tool that challenges such blind approval of existing power structures and allows people, whose voices are usually ignored, to participate in democratic struggles.

Apart from direct action campaigning based on the principles of civil disobedience, grassroots organisations like Ofog play an important role in creating alternatives for tomorrow. Since grassroots organising follows nonhierarchical structures based on autonomy and direct democracy, we train ourselves in new ways of organising the society and work towards creating sustainable alternatives.

All of this is part of the resistance. And, as we resist the war-machine called Nato in Norrbotten or disrupt weapons-peddling in Eskiltuna, we join the global struggle for peace and justice, with others around Europe and rest of the world. We build bridges between places and people, and fight oppression. As these bridges grow, a base for a new society is created.♦

Anna Andersson is a member of Ofog and Avrusta. For more information on these campaigns, in Swedish and English, see: http://www.ofog.org and http://www.avrusta.se