Who is bankrupt?
By Robert J. Burrowes
Mr Alex Chua
Official Receivers Office
Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia
I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 5 December, 1991, advising that I have been declared bankrupt by the Federal Court of Australia and informing me of my rights and obligations under the Bankruptcy Act.
The reason that I have been declared bankrupt is because I have a conscientious objection to paying taxes to finance the Australian government's military spending and complicity in the nuclear arms race. Therefore, I have refused to pay war taxes since 1983. Instead, I have paid the money to groups — such as Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth — which conduct work in accord with my conscience. There are three grounds for my conscientious objection to paying military taxes.
The intellectual basis of this objection is the result of more than 10 years of peace research during which time I have specialised in the study of conflict theory, strategic theory and non-violence theory. This research has given me a clear understanding of the nature of conflict in the international system. It has made me realise that the popular notion that war is a conflict between nation-states is a misconception; war is the direct result of national elites using military violence to defend elite power, corporate profit and personal privilege ...
War spending is a main reason for the death through hunger-related diseases of 40,000 people in Africa, Asia and Latin America each day, the destruction of 20 square kilometres of the global rainforest heritage each day, the storage of 20 tons of nuclear waste each day and the extinction of 50-100 species of life on Earth each day ...
The second element of my conscientious objection to military spending is the result of my personal experience. This includes spending three months working — as part of a Community Aid Abroad refugee health team — in the Shagarab East 2 refugee camp in the Sudan at the height of the Ethiopian war and famine in 1985. In this camp of 20,000 people, at least five people died every day from hunger-related diseases.
My personal experience also includes spending one month in Iraq as a member of the Gulf Peace Team before and after the outbreak of the Gulf War in January 1991. For two weeks, including four nights in Baghdad during the bombing, I witnessed the incredible human suffering and ecological damage wrought by weapons paid for with military taxes. Despite claims to the contrary, it is clear to me that you cannot resolve conflict by killing people.
The third element of my conscientious objection reflects my commitment to nonviolence as a way of life. It is my deeply held e is sacred; I believe in the unity of all that lives. To kill another living being, or to pay through my taxes to do so, is to kill a part of myself and to destroy a part of the magic of the universe. I will not do it.
As a result of my commitment and after thoughtful deliberation, I must inform you that my conscience will not allow me to comply with any directives of the Federal Court or the Official Trustee in Bankruptcy which will facilitate the use of my taxes for the purposes of killing. For that reason I will not complete the statutory document requiring a statement of my affairs.
In peace.