Campaigner in legal battle

Press, 4 March 1982, Page 17

Campaigner in legal battle

By

DES CASEY

In Norway, Owen Wilkes, New Zealand peace researcher, appeals against a six-month jail sentence and heavy fines for unauthorised access to secret information on defence installations. In Hawaii, Jim Albertini, long-time peace campaigner and visitor to Christchurch in. April, 1980, when he led an extensive peace education programme, is fighting a similar battle. After having his sentence, postponed for 30 days, Jim Albertini was. recently .sentenced to 90 days in jail, and is currently out on $lOOO bail pending an appeal. The postponement of his sentence followed his presentence statement on January 18 which the “Honolulu Star-Bulletin" described as a “real showstopper.” Albertini asked Judge Samuel King to stand and join him and his supporters in the Lord’s Prayer. “That would be most inappropriate,” said Judge King, who adjourned the case and left the courtroom. Earlier Jim Albertini had spoken Of the need for nonviolent protest to the nuclear arms race. ' Judge King had found Albertini guilty on December 10 of trespass for going on to I Hickam Air Force Base on

Armed Forces Day last year (May 11). He found that Albertini ignored a letter barring him from the base, a letter sent in 1972 after he had poured blood on files at the Hickam base during an anti-Vietnam war demonstration. In his pre-sentence speech Albertini reminded the Judge that December 10, the day he had been found guilty, is set aside throughout the world as International Human Rights Day. He then went on: “We are living in the midst of an unprecendented arms build up in this country and a dangerous shift in policy toward ‘first-strike’ nuclear war. If world leaders do not take the initiative to declare the use . and mere possession of nuclear weapons as criminal behaviour then the people must do so for them.” Citing two news items in the previous day’s paper — President Reagan’s revival of the civil defence programme as part of his Administration’s goal of attaining a “nuclear war fighting capability,” and news of the sea trial test of the .Trident submarine designed for “first-strike” attack capability — Albertini spoke of “the seriousness of our present global plight.” He made a call “to take up our cross as peacemakers,”

which, he said, means today “to enter shrines of warmaking, to declare a stance for life and to oppose the law that legitimises a potential nuclear holocaust.” For Jim Albertini a life statement and life commitment to non-violent resistance to nuclear arms is necessary to combat the daily expenditure, of $547 million on arms "while people starve and freeze to death in body and soul,” and to combat the building of “a global stockpile of death equivalent to nearly. two million Hiroshima bombs.” Appealing to Judge King to recognise that “modern swords can be beaten into plough shares,” he pointed to

non-violent protest as “a way of hope into a new world.” Concluding his pre-sen-tence statement, Jim Albertini suggested that he be given a non-sentence “in recognition of the need and obligation of all people to resist non-violently . the global arms race which now threatens us, and all that we love, with destruction.” Failing that, he suggested that Judge King sentence him to community service on his own non-profit farm project, or a monetary contribution to some charitable organisation, for "I cannot in conscience pay a fine to the United States Government for actions which I consider my moral responsibility.” If that is impossible, he went on, “if you truly believe that my activities — passing out leaflets for peace and holding a banner which said ‘End the Arms Race’ are, as Major Jones said, ‘anti-de-fence’ and ‘subversive’ in nature — then impose the most severe sentence possible.” It is the latter suggestion that the Judge has decided on. Having called Albertini “psychopath,” Judge King has indeed settled for a stiff sentence. And like Owen Wilkes, Jim - Albertini now sets about having his case taken to the Court of Appeal.