and the thousands of civilians still imprisioned in South Vietnamese jails. Another group which continues to be victimized by the war, though they courageously refused to participate in it, are the thousands of fugitives from compulsory military service. It is for these persons that amnesty is needed.

I

Canada and the United States were once known by the nations of the world as lands of refuge for persons who opposed peacetime conscription or who refused to fight in wars. Among those who came for such reasons were some of our Mennonite and Brethren in Christ forebears. Many came as fugitives from compulsory military service. With the war in Indochina, this situation changed and the United States has now become a land from which men are fleeing. Canada, among other nations, has been the recipient of many of these fugitives of conscience.

Many Christians in Canada have rallied to aid those troubled, conscientious young men and their families; they have provided food, shelter and fellowship. These ministrations of mercy grew out of a deep sense of Christian obligation to help "the stranger within the gates." It was also a repayment, in many cases, for the hospitality and friendship given to those who earlier came to Canada as refugee-immigrants. We thank God for these demonstrations of love and com

passion.

II

As Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Christians, we oppose all wars and believe that the refusal to participate in war is the Christian's duty. The Indochina war is no exception. Indeed this has been a particularly heinous war in the way it has been fought. It is our strong belief that Christ's message of peace and reconciliation is at the very heart of the gospel. From this perspective and with this concern we speak for amnesty, an action which we believe can help heal the wounds of the

war.

Reconciliation and the restoration of civil rights can come through a general amnesty-an amnesty which will, as the word in its origin implies, forget the legal offenses because of a greater interest at hand. For us in this situation, amnesty is the law's ability to set aside its own power to indict and punish.

Many not faced with the life and death decisions of the draftee or a person in military service, see amnesty either as a generous act for youths who made a mistake or as forgiveness for those who broke the law. For Anabaptist Christians, the view is quite different. We join with many of these young men in believing that taking a stand against the immorality of the Vietnam war needs no forgiveness. The "premature awakening of conscience" should not cause the young men who early opposed participation in this immoral war to continue to be considered criminals. Indeed are these not a part of that creative minority who have helped to change American opinion from supporting war to the recognition that it was a fundamental mistake?

III

Most Mennonite and Brethren in Christ young men have refused military service for conscientious reasons and have accepted alternative service assignments. For some from our churches, however, the decision to refuse military service also led to questioning the validity of performing alternate service. This decision was usually the result of deep struggles of conscience and a serious attempt to be a faithful Christian disciple. These Mennonite young men, perhaps numbering several dozen, are part of the larger group of potential amnesty recipients.

IV

Several hundred thousand men may be affected by a general amnesty. Some of these have never been in the military. A minority of this group chose not to cooperate with Selective Service or the military in any way. Most Mennonites who would be recipients of amnesty are in this group. A larger group of men, however, did attempt without success to gain conscientious objector classification. Despite their opposition to all war, some of these were denied conscientious objector status, often because of administrative mishandling by Selective Service. Others were not recognized as conscientious objectors because they felt participation in some wars may be right, even though they believed participation in the Vietnam war was wrong. These men accept the just war position which calls on persons to discriminate individually between just and unjust wars. Most Christian churches take this position officially; it is not recognized legally, however.

These potential recipients of amnesty who were not in the military generally find themselves in one of three situations. First, they may already be convicted of draft law violations and be in prison, on probation, or released after serving a sentence as a felon. Since 1964, 7,433 have been prosecuted and convicted thus losing some fundamental rights of citizenship. Another 17,2002 are awaiting prosecution. Second, they may be living in Canada or other countries to escape military service and prosecution. Between 30,000 and 40,000 men are in this group. Third, they may be living "underground" in the United States or its territories and be liable for prosecution. No firm statistical evidence is available regarding the number of men in this group, but it is commonly estimated that this number is as large as that of the group which migrated.

V

The largest group of potential amnesty recipients did not initially claim conscientious objection to war. They were drafted or enlisted in military service and then discovered that their conscience would not permit them to continue performing such service. As a result, these men find themselves in one of three situations.

First there are those sentenced to military prisons after unsucessful attempts to otain discharges. Second there are those who were less optimistic about getting such discharges and deserted from the military; these men when apprehended are also subject to military prosecution for their actions. The third and largest group includes those who have received other than honorable military discharges for actions based on principled objection to war. These men face consequences somewhat less severe than a convicted felon, but carry a stigma as a result of the other-than-honorable discharge that may hinder future chances of employment or favorable character references.

VI

Amnesty is in the best tradition of the United States; eleven presidents have granted amnesty following wars and rebellions. A general amnesty was granted to all following the United States Civil War-even to those found guilty of treason.

The time has come again to bind up the nation's wounds, wounds resulting this time from the Vietnamese war. Amnesty will help reconcile the nation and a large group of its alienated sons.

VII

In light of the above considerations, the Peace Section of the Mennonite Central Committee:

1. Asks our congregations to welcome back those who because of conscience violated the Selective Service Act or Military Law to avoid military service. 2. Urges our Mennonite and Brethren in Christ bodies to support a universal amnesty which without being punitive would restore all civil rights to those having refused military service for conscience sake.

3. Appeals to the United States Government to recognize the value of the witness of the men who opposed the war by restoring full civil rights with impunity to these men.

4. Commends those governments such as Canada which admitted young men who chose to leave the United States rather than to fight in the Vietnam

war.

This statement-A Christian Declaration on Amnesty-represents the consensus of the Peace Section of the Mennonite Central Committee. The document was prepared to generate honest discussion and to help to focus the moral and theological issues regarding amnesty.

Both within the Christian churches of North America and within the larger society, there is a broad diversity of thought concerning amnesty for those who would not participate in the Vietnam war. It is an issue which must be faced and ultimately resolved. The Peace Section has attempted to state with clarity and precision the position which it feels is consonant with our Mennonite theology of peacemaking and reconciling.

1 Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

WALTON HACKMAN, Executive Secretary, Peace Section.

* Department of Justice 1972 Draft Violators, Selective Service 1973 Draft Violators. National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors.

A PRELIMINARY STATEMENT ON AMNESTY AND RACE, SUBMITTED BY THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION, PROJECT ON AMNESTY

The United States Government's war in Southeast Asia tore up the countries and peoples of Indochina for an entire decade. It wreaked enormous havoc also in our own country. The war divided our society, deepened our bitterness, aggravated our violence-prone disposition, diverted our attention and resources into destructive channels, and forced millions of young men to choose between either obedience to rhw law or their own sense that this was a useless war in which to kill others or to be killed.

Most of the men who were of military age during the war in Vietnam dodged the draft and the war. Of the tens of millions who were of draft age, only about eight million, a small proportion, ever saw military service. The others had personal disabilities, exemptions, deferments, luck or courage. No more need be said here than that almost every young man whose father had the money to get him a college deferment was able to escape the draft and the war. Some hundreds of thousands directly refused participation in the war, even if that meant violating laws that the courts have upheld; they are the war resisters, whether convicted or underground or in exile. Among them, the proportion of blacks may be small, though a great many young men in the black community continue to be subject to federal prosecution for failing to register for the draft.

Of the eight million-or-so Vietnam-era veterans, about 11% to 13% are thought to be black, or approximately a fair share. About 450,000 of these veterans have "bad paper" (i.e. less-than-honorable discharges from the military), and the proportion of blacks among these is far more than a fair share. Some of the ways in which the draft boards and the military services (in their systems of justice, their assignments, and their discharge practices) massively discriminated against blacks and other minorities are reviewed in the attached memorandum.

Like virtually everything else that this society touches, the draft, the military, and the war imposed their burdens in greatly disproportionate measure upon the poor, the ill-educated, the blacks and other minorities. They were drafted in greater numbers, were assigned in greater numbers to the front-line fighting units and to unskilled and dead-end military jobs, they were wounded and killed in greater numbers, they were abused by the system of military justice, and they were finally ejected from the machinery in greater numbers with records that blight the rest of their lives. It is in this context that the issue of a universal and unconditional amnesty for all those who suffer disabilities from the draft and the military is of great and urgent importance to the black community of this country. There are increasing efforts under way, locally and nationally, to provide discharge-upgrading services for Vietnam-era veterans. The tedious review process and the inevitable litigation will overcome some of the abuses of the recent past, and more aggressive class-action litigation in the federal courts has already begun to make some systematic inroads on the worst after-effects of military racism and discrimination with respect to discharges.

Ultimately, however, only a small number of the men involved are likely to benefit from such an important but necessarily limited discharge-upgrading effort. What is needed is a change of social policy with respect to veterans and to the system of military discharges. Social policy, in this area, will be expressed in two ways: One is legislation that would eliminate administration discharges entirely and would end the military stigmatization of men who have displeased the military system of values. The other is a universal and unconditional amnesty, one that would remove all criminal and civil disabilities arising from the draft, the military, and the war, including the expunging of bad discharges and the issuance of a uniform certificate of military service which would not prejudice a veteran's life after his military experience.

A startling proportion of the black prisoners in the jails and penitentiaries of this country are men with less-than-honorable discharges. The vicious circle of discrimination in the discharge process aggravates the drug-abuse problem in the ghetto communities, the problem of crime, of unemployment, of cynicism and mutual destructiveness. A universal and unconditional amnesty for the hundreds of thousands of men whom this country continues to victimize in the context of a catastrophic war that we have ended, will not only be an act of social decency and political justice but will also bring about direct and substantial benefits to the minority community of this country. The members of the Black Caucus in the Congress have recognized this. The voices of the leaders of the black community in this cause will be essential.

MEMORANDUM-SUBJECT: RACE AND THE MILITARY SERVICES

During the war in Vietnam, national leaders of the civil-rights movement persistently protested the devastating distortion of national priorities caused by our commitment to that war. As early as 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We are taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem." 1 In 1971, a national survey showed that, by a margin of two to one, black Americans felt that their sons and relatives were fighting a disproportionate share of the war. This report describes some of the ways in which the black soldier bore (and the black veteran now bears) an unequal share of the burdens imposed by the Vietnam war.

THE SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM

The inequities of the Selective Service System began with the composition of the local draft boards, which were made up almost entirely of white professionals and white salaried officials. In 1967, only 1.3% of all local draft board members were black. Moreover, the black young men who were among the poor in our society faced a bias in two additional ways: they were not as apt to be eligible for college deferment and they could not easily get into the Reserves. As a result, black men were drafted in far greater proportion that whites."

MILITARY ASSIGNMENTS AND PROMOTIONS

Black servicemen were assigned, to a significantly high degree, to a few limited fields and to the lower pay grades. A serviceman's score on the Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT) determined the branch of service and the type of outfit to which he was assigned. The Department of Defense has reported that blfflcks receive "markedly lower" AFQT aptitude scores than white soldiers." In all services, black servicemen were consistently placed in a less favorable "Mean Mental Category" than white servicemen on the same educational level, even though the DOD admitted that this was an exceptionally crude measure, based on the AFQT score. As a result, black soldiers wound up in disproportionately large numbers in active combat and were more likely to be killed in action. Black servicemen were more often assigned to the so-called "soft-core" career fields (such as Food Service, Supply, Administration and Transportation) than to technical or "hard core" fields."

In the Army generally as well as in Europe in particular, black servicemen were in substantially lower pay grade categories than white servicemen.10 The promotional slots available at any given time, moreover, were few in "soft" as compared to "hard core" fields. Thus, the system was similar to the "tracking system" employed by many school systems." A DOD Task Force report acknowl

1 Quoted in, The American Military, edited by Martin Oppenheimer, Aldine Publishing Co., 1971, "Black Veterans Return," by James Fendrich and Michael Pearson, p. 165. 2 Ibid., p. 166.

A Conflict of Loyalties, edited by James Finn, Pegasus, New York, 1968, "The Selective Service System: Actualities and Alternatives," by Arnold S. Kaufman, p. 241. Mr. Kaufman cites the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, Chairman, Burke Marshall (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967).

• Ibid.

In 1967, although only 18% of whites who qualified for service were actually drafted, 30% of qualified blacks were compelled to serve. (Ibid.)

The Search for Military Justice, Report of an NAACP Inquiry into the Problems of the Negro Serviceman in West Germany, NAACP Special Contribution Fund, 1971, p. 1. Among Army men with 19 to 24 months of service, about 23% of the whites have scores of 30 or lower, compared to over 72% of black servicement with the same scores. (Ibid.)

Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces, Volume IV, Department of Defense Publication, p. 44.

Though comprising only 11% of the population during the first 11 months of 1966, 22.4% of Army men killed in action were black. (Report of the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, 1967. Cited by Arnold S. Kaufman in A Conflict of Loyalties, p. 241).

In the Air Force, 37% of the personnel assigned to Service and Supply units were black, as of January 1971, as were 25% of those in Administration. (The Search for Military Justice, p. 1).

10 Among non-high school graduates who scored between 31 and 40 on the AFQT and who were assigned to the Infantry, 30% of the blacks were at pay grade of E-3 or lower compared to only about 14% of white soldiers at that pay grade level. Less than 20% of the black soldiers in this group were at a pay grade of E-5 or higher, compared with 27% of the white soldiers. (The Search for Military Justice, p. 3).

11 Ibid. p. 2.

edged that the disparity between the two racial groups with respect to concentration of personnel in hard and soft core skill fields was a contributing factor to the "greater proportion of job dissatisfaction complaints on the part of black personnel, which in turn may have a bearing on the disciplinary action rate of this minority group." 12

The need for more black officers was high on the list of recommendations of enlisted men for improving race relations within the military. There was a dearth of black officers in the services, 13 and, for the most part, they wound up in Staff, as distinguished from Command, jobs. Black officers voiced dissatisfaction with their rate of advancement and the "dead-end" assignments they drew.14

ADMINISTRATION OF MILITARY JUSTICE

According to the report of an NAACP inquiry into the problems of the black servicemen in West Germany, "there are two levels of military justice-the judicial and the nonjudicial—and neither is working properly." 15

Judicial Action

Judicial action refers primarily to court martial procedure. A disproportionately large number of black prisoners served sentences in military correctional or confinement facilities as the result of conviction and sentence by courts-martial. In January 1971, two out of every five prisoners were black. Later that month, the black percentage increased to 50%. Of the G.I.'s in confinement facilities surveyed by the Task Force, 37.8% were black, whereas in June 1972, black soldiers made up only 11.5% of the armed forces.17

16

The average sentence was longer for black prisoners (3 years) than for whites (2.5 years).18 Blacks received a longer sentence to confinement at hard labor (2.88 years to 1.91 years), and had a larger percentage of sentences which included total forfeitures of pay and allowances (84.7% to 76%), and punitive discharges (99% to 94.8%).19 Among the soldiers convicted of civilian type felonies, the average sentence to confinement was 3.02 years for blacks to 2.54 years for whites. More blacks received a punitive discharge (98.25% to 90.32%) and total forfeiture (86% to 74%) than whites.20

The Task Force, in profiles of black and white prisoners, gave data on geographical and family background, pre-service and prior service records, and observations by social workers and psychiatrists. Most white prisoners were raised in rural areas or towns of under 50,000 pupulation, whereas a majority of blacks spent their childhood in large urban centers.21 Black prisoners were more likely than whites to come from families with low incomes and from broken families.22 In the court-martial convictions which led to placement in the Air Force retraining program, the most common offense was Absence Without Official Leave (AWOL), whites committing a higher percentage of AWOL and drugrelated offenses, blacks a higher percentage of offenses which tend to directly confront or challenge military authority or are equivalent to civilian felony offenses.23 The NAACP team found that more than three out of five soldiers convicted for the major offense of willful disobedience were black."

Nonjudicial Action

Nonjudicial action refers to the administration of discipline at the company command level, without due process procedural protection. The following facts pertaining to "Article 15's" and pretrial confinement give further evidence that the military system of justice bore down more heavily on the black serviceman. Article 15's.-The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth, in Article 15, the authority of the Commanding Officer to impose nonjudicial punishment on enlisted men for infractions of regulations. Under the Code, a soldier may choose to have a trial by court-martial instead of accepting Article 15 punishment. Yet there is a lack of black military-justice personnel available. In Europe in 1971,

12 Task Foce, p. 106.

13 The average ratio of officers to enlisted men in all the services as of June 1972 was 1: 5.9 for white servicemen compared to 1: 31.7 for black servicemen. (Task Force, p. 303). 14 The Search for Military Justice, p. 4.

15 Ibid., p. 5.

16 Ibid., p. 10.

17 Task Force, p. 103.

18 Ibid., p. 57.

19 Ibid., p. 61.

20 Ibid., p. 63.

21 Ibid., p. 99.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 107.

24 The Search for Military Justice, p. 10.