Easter Marches: “End wars, stop rearmament!”

This year’s Easter marches are marked by demands for an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The peace activists defend themselves against criticism that they are naive.

The traditional Easter marches continued in numerous cities with calls for peace and disarmament. According to the Peace Cooperative Network, around 70 events were planned nationwide on Holy Saturday, including in Cologne, Duisburg, Bonn, Bremen, Hanover, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Munich.

In Cologne, according to police reports, around 300 participants gathered on Roncalliplatz at the cathedral under the motto “For a civil turnaround – end wars, stop rearmament!” According to the police, around 200 participants came together in Duisburg at the start of the Rhine-Ruhr Easter March. The march continues on Sunday with a bike ride from Essen to Bochum. The traditional conclusion is on the third day in Dortmund. In Münster, a peace bicycle demo was planned through the city.

The themes of the Easter marches

According to the organizers, the central themes of this year’s Easter marches, which have the motto “Now more than ever – together for peace”, are demands for negotiations in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which violates international law, as well as in the Gaza war, nuclear disarmament and criticism of increasing arms spending.

The peace activist Willi van Ooyen, who has been an organizer of the German Easter March movement for more than 40 years, rejected criticism from politicians on radio station WDR 5 that the peace activists, for example in the Ukraine war, did not clearly name the aggressor Russia and did not demand that Russia withdraws. The most important point is “that the weapons are silent and you can then communicate,” said Ooyen. “No blame will help us, only sensible positions will help us get back on the path to understanding.”

The federal government wants to prepare Germany to be “war-ready,” said Ooyen, alluding to the words of Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD). This is a complete departure from the previous positions of the détente policy. This is “now the new zeitgeist, (…) which is supposed to wear us down, here in society, so that we pay new homage to the military.”

The peace movement’s criticism of the federal government’s course is anything but naive, said the spokesman for the Peace Cooperative Network, Kristian Golla. “The West should urgently consider diplomatic approaches before the situation for the people of Ukraine deteriorates further.”