European Peace Marches

In November 1984, EPM organized a five-day "debriefing" workshop on the Hartmannswillerkopf in Alsace, France, following the struggle against the installation of Pershing II and SS-20 nuclear missiles in Germany (Mutlangen).

About 200 representatives from many European peace movements came together to discuss the reasons of their failure to prevent this escalation in the arms race.

Arindi Seevah, disciple of Gandhi and founder of the Women's March Against Violence Project, recalled, in an interview broadcast on ITN and Zee TV: ...this international meeting in the Alsace Vosges, among the marvelous trees, overlooking the plains of Alsace, on a battlefield where tens of thousands had died in a 'war to end all wars', surrounded by bunkers, trenches, barbed wire and rusted old killing machinery, is one of the great memories I have of my trip to Europe.

The place was literally vibrating with energy, one only had to close its eyes to hear the screams of the millions of dead, feel their desperation.

We slept in the freezing cold of the old bunkers, cooked soup in an old machine gun nest, had heated discussions in the natural amphitheatre of a bomb crater.