CPTnet
14 May 2005
IRAQ UPDATE: 1-5 May 2005
Sunday, 1 May 2005
Matthew Chandler and Sheila Provencher visited friends on their day
off. Provencher attended Mass at St. Raphael's in the evening. During the
service, two bursts of gunfire erupted just outside. A nun who was a
doctor went outside to see if she could help. She learned that police
officers were shooting to warn cars not to drive through barriers meant to
protect the church.
Electricity from the city grid was on and off all day in short,
unpredictable spurts.
Douglas Pritchard, Tom Fox and a translator left Baghdad for a two-day trip
to Karbala to meet with representatives of the Human Rights Watch of
Karbala (HRW) and the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT). They drove through
the town of Mahmoudiah, which had been a trouble spot before the elections.
Both Pritchard and Fox were wearing keffiyehs to minimize their Western
appearance. At the main checkpoint into Kerbala, all cars without license
plates from that region were being pulled over and searched.
The team met briefly with the director of the HRO of Karbala. The director
noted that he had attended a conference in Lebanon with human rights
organizations from the Middle East. The director updated them on the joint
work of CPT with the new Muslim Peacemaker Teams. He said the information
was "very well received."
That afternoon, a member of HRW of Karbala and MPT took Fox and Prichard on
a walking tour of the area around the two shrines, El Abbas and El Hussein.
They met the leader of the Al Hussein shrine as well as the head of the
shrines library. The library head said that he very much-welcomed Saddam's
overthrow because the shrine, the library and the Sh'ia people had suffered
greatly under his rule. He said they are putting in a large computer room
(about twenty-five terminals), preparing a website and developing the
capacity for Internet users to have access to the library's collection.
Monday, 2 May 2005
BAGHDAD: Provencher accompanied an Iraqi human rights activist and an
Iraqi mother to Scania military base. The mother's 20-year-old son had been
detained during a raid on their home on Tuesday, 26 April 2005. The mother
said that U.S. soldiers overturned furniture as if they were looking for
something. Then they locked her and her daughters in one room while they
detained her son and his visiting friends. Unknown assailants kidnapped her
husband months ago, and she is now alone in the house with no male
protector, which is a serious situation in Iraqi culture.
At the military base, the mother asked if her son was there. Soldiers
confirmed that he was there but could not tell her the charges, allow her to
see her son, or tell her if he would be released or transferred to Abu
Ghraib.
"You have to come back and ask again in two weeks," they said. "It takes
three weeks to go through the interrogation process, and we're kind of
backed up right now." She departed weeping.
Provencher spoke with some soldiers and tried to explain to them the trauma
that families of detainees experience, especially since a high percentage of
detainees turn out to be innocent. Many families do not know for months
where their loved ones were taken. The soldiers tried to laugh off their
unease by saying: "What should we do, put a sticky note on the door, saying
"We took your son, here's
where you can find him?'"
CPTers learned that Kahdhan Munther Ahmed Salih al Obaydi, a member of CPT
Adopt-a-Detainee Campaign who had been detained since October
2003, has been released.
KARBALA: The team met with members and the president of MPT.
MPTers had specific questions about membership and how CPT organized
financial support. The president noted that a number of MPTers are
unemployed or underemployed. He also noted that groups or individuals
generally do not have access to funds raised by the mosques. He said after
years of wars, the embargo and now an occupation there is very little
economic base from which to draw
fundraising. Pritchard gave a brief history of CPT;s formation, fundraising
and membership practices, but noted that MPT may want to do something
different from CPT. Possibilities include writing proposals for grants from
international NGOs or developing a
different model of membership.
The MPT President then presented their proposed symbolic action to assist
the people of Fallujah in cleaning up their city. He gave the MPT members
an overview of the plans and asked if they
would be willing to risk traveling up to Fallujah. Everyone present said
they would be willing to go. He also noted that he had contacted groups and
individuals in Najaf and he expects ten or more
people to come with them from that city.
Tuesday, 3 May 2005
BAGHDAD: Matt Chandler and Sheila Provencher interviewed family members of
two detainees, captured for violating curfew with three of their friends in
December 2004. The families have had
a very difficult time getting appointments for visitation. Chandler and
Provencher told them they would publish their story on the Internet.
KaRBALA: During the morning, the MPT president came to the hotel for a
planning session for the action in Fallujah on Friday. They drafted a
statement from Muslim Peacemaker Teams to the residents of Fallujah
explaining the purpose of the action.
The return trip was fairly smooth with only one car search and one road
closure. Upon arriving in Baghdad, they hit a huge traffic jam caused by a
suicide bombers attack on a police station; it took
nearly one hour to travel the last three miles to the team flat.
Wednesday 4 May 2005
Chandler spent two hours waiting in lines at the Residency Office in order
to get an exit visa.
Two humvees with two squads on foot patrol were working their way down the
street where the team lives. Fox and Provencher went out to talk with them.
Fox talked to a young U.S. Army corporal. The
corporal said he had been in Iraq since February and probably would be
stationed here at least a year. Fox learned he was from Southern
California. He said their assignment was, "Random street checks."
As they talked about the situation here in Iraq he said, "Hey, I don't know
what I'm doing here."
Provencher spoke with another young corporal. When he heard that she was
part of Christian Peacemaker Teams, working for nonviolent
alternatives, he said "that sounds better than what we're doing."
Provencher said that he was welcome to join CPT, and he said "I'd like to.
I tried to not come here [to Iraq], but they made me. When I found out what
Dubya is doing out here, I didn't want to come. I'm not a pacifist, but I'm
a member of the Green Party. And what I've seen here, this isn't what we're
about."
Thursday, 5 May 2005
Chandler, Pritchard, Provencher and Fox had a meeting with MPTers and
associates to plan the symbolic clean-up action in Fallujah scheduled for
the following morning.
Friday, 6 May 2005
Chandler stayed in Baghdad as backup person while Pritchard, Provencher, and
Fox traveled to Fallujah with members of MPT.
CPTers and the Shiite MPTers worked together with Suni Muslims from Fallujah
to clean up some of the destruction from recent US attacks. (See 9 May 2005
CPTnet release, "CPTers and MPTers help Sunnis clean up Fallujah.")
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