Lutheran Church of Wuerttemberg - Annual Meeting of parish peace delegates and pastors assigned to offer guidance to conscientious objectors:

THE BIRKACH DECLARATION: BAN ARMS EXPORTS!

"'European Champion of arms exports' - thus our country was described a few days ago. To me that news was like another reminder of our Lord's death on the cross. (...) Our task is to forestall violence that aims to kill, not to work towards such killing through armed violence."

(Bishop W. Huber, sermon on Good Friday, 10 April 2009)

The Lutheran Church of Wuerttemberg Annual Meeting of parish peace delegates and pastors assigned to offer guidance to conscientious objectors on 20-21 April 09 in Stuttgart-Birkach dealt with issues of arms production, arms exports, and the possible transformation of armament industries. We are still deeply distressed by what happened in three small towns in our region when, in the space of a few weeks , first 16, then 4 lives were taken by armed young men determined to kill. In each case the murderers had easy access to firearms.

According to "Amnesty International", one human life worldwide is lost every minute through small arms. It is estimated that 500 to 800 million small arms are in circulation and ready for use. We are all the more appalled by the fact that our country produces and exports arms on a horrendous scale.

The 2007 Report on Arms Exports by the Joint Conference of Churches for Development (GKKE) names 7.7 billion Euro as the value of government-approved arms exports from Germany in 2006 - up from 6.2 billion in 2005. That means, Germany has further confirmed its position as the leading arms exporter in the European Union. Between 1996 and 2005, the value of government-approved small-arms exports for military use rose by 700 per cent!

The EKD (Union of Protestant Churches) memorandum 'Living by God's peace - working for peace in justice' states: "... the accumulation and the spreading of small and light arms is a threat to peace, stability, and a sustainable development and must not be underestimated. It is therefore clear that Christian initiatives, too, are committed to peace policies that aim to end the further spread of such weapons in a sincere and controllable way."

(cf Living by God's Peace, 2007, p. 128. In the same spirit: a statement from a delegation of the World Council of Churches on a visit to the German Ministry of Defence, 3 July 2008. Also, more basically, the European Churches in their "Charta Oecumenica", ch.III,8)

We therefore appeal to the General Synod of the Württemberg Lutheran Church to be aware of its ethical Obligation for peace policies and to put the following demands to our parliament and government:

• An extremely restrictive government attitude towards permitting arms and ammunitions exports. Each such permission must be justified and accounted for in each individual case.
• A complete end to the government practice of acting as guarantor to arms manufacturers to secure arms export contracts ('Hermes guarantees’)
• More transparency: Parliament and the public must be informed about arms exports b e f o r e they are finalized, in order to make a democratic process of decision-making at all possible.
• Transformation (conversion) of armament industries into the manufacture of civilian, life enhancing products.

Rather than 'European Champion of arms exports' Germany should strive to become 'European Champion of training experts in peaceable, civilian methods of conflict management.

Stuttgart-Birkach, 21 April 2009

(unanimously approved)

(Translation: Hartmann Doerry)