CPTnet
7 March 2006

CHICAGO/TORONTO: Christian Peacemaker Teams' response to latest video of
CPTers missing in Baghdad

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is aware that a new videotape showing
members of our organization abducted in Iraq on November 26, 2005 has aired
today on Al-Jazeera television. We continue to pray for their safe and
speedy release so that they may return to their families and carry on their
peaceful work on behalf of all Iraqi detainees.

This past weekend marked the 100th day since our friends disappeared in
Baghdad. In vigils around the world, people came together to honor our
missing colleagues and to call for their safe release. We also hold in our
hearts the families of 14,600 Iraqis currently detained illegally by the
Multinational Forces in Iraq who likewise await the release of their loved
ones. These detainees are being held without formal charges, without access
to their families and legal advisors, and without recourse to a fair and
open judicial process.

In the latest video we were so glad to see Jim Loney alive. We were so glad
to see Harmeet Sooden alive. We were so glad to see Norman Kember alive. We
do not know what to make of Tom Fox's absence from this video. However we do
know what motivated Tom and his colleagues to go to Iraq. Tom wrote on the
day before he was taken, "We are here to take part in the creation of the
Peaceable Realm of God. ...How we take part in the creation of this realm is
to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength, and to love our
neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves."

Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers welcome CPT as a nonviolent,
independent presence. Iraqis have asked us to tell their stories in our home
communities, to share with them our own experiences of peacemaking, to
assist them in building nonviolent institutions in Iraq, and to accompany
them as they seek justice for detainees and others suffering from the
oppression of Iraq. We seek to promote what is human in all of us and so to
offer a glimpse of hope in a dark time. This hope springs from our own faith
tradition. We have witnessed a similar hope within the faith traditions of
the people of Iraq.

We believe that the root cause of the abduction of our colleagues is the
U.S. and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many in Iraq have
experienced this long war as terrorism. The occupation must end. Work
towards this is being coordinated by the Global Call for Nonviolent
Resistance to End the Military Occupation of Iraq. The next events in this
global campaign are scheduled in cities around the world for March 18-20,
which marks the third anniversary of the attack on Iraq. We urge citizens
everywhere to join this effort to end the occupation. More information is
available at http://globalcalliraq.org

Now is the time for those holding our colleagues Harmeet, Norman, Jim and
Tom to release them back to the care of their families, and back to the
peacemaking work which inspired them to come to Iraq.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is a violence-reduction program and has been
present in Iraq since October 2002. Teams of trained peacemakers work in
areas of lethal conflict around the world.