Lister

By: Kerstin Bruun-Hansen
Photo: Marie Joensen
Translated by Sara Marie Atkinson

In between football-for-fun, sunbathing and tightrope walking by Agora C, a war zone lies - A war zone with severed and mutilated limbs, with stationed Red Cross workers and soldiers in army clothes and protective helmets.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the war zone here is chalked as a sports field, and the war plays out as a game of dodgeball, the scenario would not have been very festival festive at all.

The rules of war – on the playing field

However, to create a party among the festival goers isn’t the sole purpose of the dodge ball court. Behind the activity is the Danish Red Cross, and the idea is to focus on the rules of war – simple and important rules that must be followed in all the war zones of the world.

This morning’s game between Team Army and Team Intifada is kicked off. The players – or soldiers, if you will – are dressed in camouflage clothing and helmets, and they energetically throw themselves around between cardboard Red Cross workers and hula hoops containing bloody limbs of the same material to avoid being hit by the ball.

And the rules are as simple as they are in the wars of the real world: The hula hoops illustrate mine fields with land mines and cluster bombs – they are banned, so if you hit them, you are out. The same happens if you hit or hide behind Red Cross workers, who are also protected in war zones of the real world.

Watch out for civilians

”Oops, now the ball has hit the civilian population – and that is forbidden by the Geneve convention,” it sounds from the megaphone when the ball goes off the court and lands by the tight rope-walking and sunbathing festival-goers on the other side of the fence. Team Intifada loses and Team Army wins the game of war.

”If this can help to call people’s attention to the fact that actually there are rules of war, and that they are important to follow, then we have accomplished what we came for”, campaign manager Kirsten Marie Kristensen tells us.