Archive - May 2008

May 31st

CHICAGO/TORONTO: CPT launches hostage crisis book, _118 Days_; Order before 5 June for reduced price

May 31st, 2008
in:

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has announced the 5 June 2008 release of 118 Days: Christian Peacemaker Teams held hostage in Iraq, a book about the hostage crisis endured by the organization and its team members in Iraq, beginning in November 2005. Editor Tricia Gates Brown has compiled chapters written by members of CPT and CPT sympathizers actively involved with securing the release of Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney, Tom Fox, and Norman Kember, as well as by family, friends, and others whom the crisis profoundly affected.

May 30th

TORONTO: Bob Lovelace and the KI 6 freed

May 30th, 2008
in:
On 28 May 2008, following a day of hearings at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, a three-judge panel granted Bob Lovelace and the “KI Six” an unconditional release, stayed their heavy fines, and limited their sentence to time served. The court still has to issue a written, final opinion, a process Lovelace described as “complicated.” Following their release, all seven were honoured guests at the Gathering of Mother Earth Protectors’ campsite at Queen’s Park, the site of the Ontario Provincial Parliament.

May 28th

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Wed., May 28, 2008

May 28th, 2008
in:
PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Wed., May 28, 2008

Pray for the millions displaced by the continuing violence in Iraq. Christian Peacemaker Teams reports that those who fled to the Kurdish north live in poor conditions and are straining the limited local services.

Doug Pritchard
Christian Peacemaker Teams
Toronto, Canada

TORONTO: First Nations and supporters kick off Gathering of Mother Earth Protectors and Sovereignty Sleepover

May 28th, 2008
in:

On 26 May 2008, an estimated one thousand people gathered in Queen’s Park, seat of the Ontario Provincial Parliament, to support of the rights of the indigenous people of Canada. Members of the First Nations communities of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows First Nation) were joined by many others, both First Nation and non-indigenous.

COLOMBIA: That was how it happened

May 28th, 2008
in:
Once the assembly had gathered and after residents told the story of the village, the community spontaneously organized a dramatization of a tragic day when the paramilitaries harassed, threatened, and killed two community members and then destroyed the village.

Completely prepared in their roles, the participants reenacted what had happened. The son of a man who was killed that day represented "Don Carlos," the commander of the paramilitary group. Other actors in makeup completed the group that attacked El ParaĂ­so. The play also included "Machuca," an informant and guerrilla deserter, who pointed out various members of the community as collaborators with guerrillas. The leaders of the community played themselves.

May 27th

IRAQ REFLECTION: Speak to us Isaiah

May 27th, 2008
in:
In days to come, the mountain where the Temple stands will be the highest one of all…Many nations will come streaming to it…. “Let us go up the hill of the Lord…He will teach us what He wants us to do…” (Isaiah 2:2-3)

Throughout mountain villages in northern Iraq, villagers flee from ongoing bombing and shelling by Turkish forces. Turkey’s battles with the Kurdish Worker Party (PKK) continue to wreak havoc on the villagers caught in the crossfire. They stream south to internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps; when there is a lull in they bombing, they stream back up the mountain to their homes. The assistant mayor of the region has said the villagers have become psychologically crippled.

May 26th

COLOMBIA: CPT delegation to explore impact of war on Afro and Indigenous Colombians

May 26th, 2008
in:
The southwestern Colombian Department (province) of Nariño is the destination of a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation that arrived in Bogotá on Wednesday, 14 May 2008. Four three-and-half days in Bogotá, the group met with a variety of indigenous and Afro-Colombian organizations to discuss the consequences of the ongoing war on these peoples. Displacements, death threats, landmine deaths and destruction of food crops by fumigations targeting coca crops under the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia are among the serious consequences to these indigenous and Afro-Colombian people as the war continues. The delegation has also met with several church groups to hear how they are seeking to support the people hurt by the continued violence.

May 24th

IRAQ UPDATE: 23 April-3 May 2008

May 24th, 2008
in:
Wednesday, 23 April
Beth Pyles, Chi Chun Yuan, and Michele Naar-Obed visited the women Peshmerga at their base in Fermandi. This Peshmerga Women’s Unit formed twelve years ago, with the support of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish President of Iraq, and the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). Women who want to join the Peshmerga must belong to the PUK, (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), the political party to which Talabani belongs. As the team left, the female general said, in an expression of solidarity, “We are women first, Peshmerga second.”

May 23rd

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Fri., May 23, 2008

May 23rd, 2008
in:
PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Fri., May 23, 2008

Pray for the small farmers and miners of Colombia. They fear that current negotiations for a free trade agreement with Canada and the USA will favour large local and foreign corporations at the expense of subsistence workers and their families.

Doug Pritcahrd
Christian Peacemaker Teams
Toronto, Canada

May 21st

UGANDA: Reconciliation rituals

May 21st, 2008
in:

Uganda is recovering from the violence of civil war. How does a victim community reconcile with those members who have done the killing?

Twenty years of war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the government forces in Northern Uganda drove all the people off the land and into IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps. Now fragile peace talks are in process, resettlement on the land has begun and LRA soldiers are returning to their communities with amnesty. The LRA abducted many of the soldiers from these communities as children but they have committed horrible massacres. Is reintegration possible? How can justice prevail?