Protesters call for end to standoff
Henri-Jean Moxhet, a middleaged man, held a banner with the word peace in multiple languages in the square outside BrusselsNorth train station in the Belgian capital on Feb 26.
He was one of about 2,000 people who demonstrated for peace in an event in which the organizer, Europe for Peace and Solidarity, said participants might differ on the cause of the RussiaUkraine conflict but wanted deescalation and peace talks to end the conflict, now in its second year.
“I’m demonstrating for peace,” Moxhet said. “I think it’s very, very important that ordinary citizens can go on the street to show we do not agree with the government. We want peace.”
The weekend of Feb 25-26 saw rallies across Europe and North America against NATO prolonging the conflict, from London to Vancouver, from Paris to Zurich.
In an opinion poll conducted in Germany before the one-year anniversary of the start of the conflict on Feb 24, 51 percent of respondents said they thought arming Ukraine meant being part of the conflict, while 37 percent disagreed. The poll was conducted by the polling organization YouGov for the German news agency Deutsche PresseAgentur.
Germany has approved 2.6 billion euros ($2.75 billion) worth of arms to Ukraine in the past year, trailing the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland.
“Biden, stop the war,” shouted Melra Apraxine as she marched with the procession on the Avenue du Boulevard in central Brussels.
Matt Mercelis, of Sint-Niklaas, northern Belgium, voiced his objection to Belgian and European Union politicians, saying they “are promoting the war” by sending more weapons.
A peace demonstration was also staged in Berlin on Feb 25 condemning Germany’s supplying weapons to Ukraine and calling for peace talks to end the conflict. Berlin police put the number of protesters at 13,000 at the Brandenburg Gate but organizers said 50,000 people had taken part.
Mercelis said he had learned about the 12-point measures China had laid out in a position paper on settling the Ukraine conflict politically, issued on Feb 24. “I really believe it can change something.”
However, some Western politicians are likely to cast doubt in their “classic anti-China propaganda”, he said. “They don’t want to end the war.”
On Feb 25, thousands of people demonstrated in Berlin to condemn the government’s supply of arms to Ukraine and called for peace talks to end the conflict.
Sahra Wagenknecht, a lawmaker of The Left party in Germany, accused the German government of seeking to “ruin Russia” and said Moscow should be made an “offer” so peace talks could resume.
Some participants at the rally held banners with the slogan “Americans go home”.
The author Alice Schwarzer, with Wagenknecht one of the organizers, said that it was time to look beyond Left and Right. The two women have launched a petition said to have garnered over 645,000 signatures.