An open letter by women,
East and West, to all citizens of Europe
WOMEN. DOCUMENT We are women in five European countries where the development of new American and Soviet weapons has begun. We are women from different cultures, from Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern Europe, some of us involved in the church, others not, some of us feminists, pacifists and members of many other human rights and environmental movements.
Despite our differences, we are united by the will for self-determination, to struggle against the culture of militarism in the world, against uniforms and violence, against our children being educated as soldiers and against the senseless waste of resources. We demand the right of self-determination for all individuals and peoples. We want to make a specific cultural contribution to changing existing social structures. That is why we also challenge conventional gender roles and why we ask men to do the same.
The freedom to determine one's own fate means freedom from exploitation and violence: in our thoughts and actions, at our places of work, in our relationship to nature and the relationship between men and women, between generations, between states, between East and West and between North and South in global terms.
Together we want to break this circle of violence and the anxieties created in us by this violence: anxiety about nuclear weapons, fearing the death of humanity and the end of the earth, fears about the rape or our bodies and souls. Together we wish to confront these anxieties and be able to overcome them, no longer illegally, but with the right to free expression of opinion for everyone, especially in those places where the right is denied on a daily basis. There can be no realistic peace perspective without respect for human rights.
The deployment of new nuclear weapons in our countries has limited our freedom and increased our fears. Our obligation to break the circle of violence has grown because of our potential shared responsibility for a possible catastrophe. We are conscious of being both perpetrators and victims of systems of violence. In both roles, we are not the ones who have made the decisions. We reject both roles. Nor are we reassured by the fact that representatives of both superpowers are about to negotiate over our heads again in Geneva. Once again we are expected to pin our hopes on their seeing reason and voluntarily renouncing the production and use of weapons of mass destruction. Once again talks on how to hold talks are supposed to make us believe that it is possible to solve the problems from above.
Instead of this, we choose the way of self-determined initiatives from below. militarisation of society, which is why we reject any involvement This road does in the preparations for war — nor does it traverse missile ramps or the destruction of nature and interpersonal relationships.
We do not want a peace which oppresses us, nor a war which will annihilate us.
Forty years after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, forty years after the bloc confrontation began, we want now, at last, to begin collectively getting to know and understand each other better and meeting one another beyond the wall which divides not merely the borders of our countries but all too often our hearts and minds as well.
We have begun detente from below: Join us!
This statement has been signed by women from all five missile deployment Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA Eva Kanturkova, Anna Sabatova (senoir), Dana Nemcova, Marketa M. Nemkova, Jana Sternova, Libuse Silhanova, Marie Rihova, Anna Marvanova, Zdena Tomin, Ruth Tosek. GDR Barbel Bohley, Ulrike Poppe, Irena Kurkotz, Katja Havemann, Gisela Metz. ITALY Elisabetta Addis, Paola Baglioni, Luisa Boccia, Raffaella Bolini, Flavia Bucca, Anna Caporicei, Giuseppina Ciuffreda, Lucia Corbo, Joan Crowley, Vichi de Marchi, Tatiana Facchini, Dora Ferlazzo, Antonella Giunta, Dhiara Ingrao, Cristina Lascialfari, Anna Martellotti, Antonella Martorelli, Cecilia Mastrantonio, Anna Pia Nadalutti, Stefania Piro, Marina Pivetta, Rita Sanvittore, Titta Sassani, Giuliana Sgrena, Lorenza Sorgato, Nicoletta Tiliacos, Anna Vio, Silvia Zamboni, Lisa Zanette, Liciena Castelina. WEST GERMANY Irene Flechsbard, Petra Kelly, Maries Waskill, Beate Dohmann, Dorothy E-Simske, Sabine Helens, Eva Quistrop, Eva Marie Eppler, Hanna Kutowski, Barbara Senft, Christina Mengenberg, Mikhaela van Freyhold, Gerlind Gode, Heike Vidrans. BRITAIN Mary Kaldor, Sheila Oakes, Margot Miller, Jan Williams, Fiona Weir, Christine Connochie, Jane Dibblin, Nancy Wood, Sue Willett, Jane Mayes, Lydia Merrill, Barbara Bambridge, Margaret Crampton, Anja Manser, Clare Ryle, Carol Hughes, Sally Wood, St. Neott's women's peace group, Jan Martin, Patricia Chilton, Manika Frisch, Denise Aaron, Evelyn Silver, Deborah Leach, Gwen Manchester, Jill Manchester, Joan Gallina, Bee Springwood, Annie Lockwood, Ann Mawson, Maria Wood, Monika Roos, Jolend Norman, Janet Tyroll, Stefanie Durcek, Helen Peace Chariot, Jean Ward, Marguerite Ayeres, Sue Scott, Christine Jill Liddington, Ann Harrison, Kate Soper, Anne Tunnicliffe.
Signatories as of 7 March 1985. International Viewpoint 1 July 1995