Tag Archives ⇒ Teams

Christian peacemaker Teams News

March 23, 2006
· Martin Kelley

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 26, 2005 four mem­bers of “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:www.cpt.org were abduct­ed in iraq. On March 20th the body of Amer­i­can Quak­er Tom Fox was found; on March 23rd, the remain­ing three hostages were freed by U.S. and British mil­i­tary forces.
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, we have always been impressed and high­ly sup­port­ive of the deep wit­ness of the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams. Their mem­bers have rep­re­sent­ed the best in both the peace and Chris­t­ian move­ments, con­sis­tent­ly putting them­selves in dan­ger to wit­ness the gospel of peace. Not con­tent to write let­ters or stand on pick­ett lines in safe west­ern cap­i­tals, they go to the front­lines of vio­lence and pro­claim a rad­i­cal alternative.
While we can be grate­ful for the release of the three remain­ing hostages, we should con­tin­ue to remem­ber the 43 for­eign hostages still being held in iraq and the 10 – 30 iraqis report­ed­ly tak­en hostage each and every day. As iraq slips into full-scale civ­il war we must also orga­nize against the war-mongerers, both for­eign and inter­nal and finde ways of stand­ing along­side those iraqis who want noth­ing more than peace and freedom.

Here’s links to recent articles on the situation: https://​deli​cious​.com/​m​a​r​t​i​n​_​k​e​l​l​e​y​/​n​e​w​s​.​c​p​t​-​f​o​u​r​.​f​o​x​m​e​m​o​r​ial

And a per­son­al note from Nonviolence.org’s Mar­tin Kel­ley: I myself am a Chris­t­ian and Quak­er and one of our folks, Tom Fox, of Lan­g­ley Hill (Vir­ginia) Friends Meet­ing is among the hostages. I don’t know Tom per­son­al­ly but over the last few days I’ve learned we have many Friends in com­mon and they have all tes­ti­fied to his deep com­mitt­ment to peace. Some of the links above are more explic­it­ly Quak­er than most things I post to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, but they give per­spec­tive on why Tom and his com­pan­ions would see putting them­selves in dan­ger as an act of reli­gious ser­vice. I am grate­ful for Tom’s cur­rent wit­ness in iraq – yes, even as a hostage – but I cer­tain­ly hope he soon comes back to his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty and that the atten­tion and wit­ness of these four men’s ordeal helps to bring the news of peace to streets and halls of Bagh­dad, Wash­ing­ton, Lon­don and Ottawa.

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peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees

November 28, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The UK “News Tele­graph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace move­ment have been wor­ry­ing about all day: that at least some of the four west­ern­ers abduct­ed in iraq over the week­end were mem­bers of the “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/
bq. A British anti-war activist abduct­ed in iraq was inves­ti­gat­ing human rights abus­es with a group called the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Team when he was held.
Nor­man Kem­ber, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a for­mer sec­re­tary of the Bap­tist peace Fel­low­ship in Eng­land and a board mem­ber of the Eng­lish Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. He’s been an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edi­tion of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about chal­leng­ing him­self to do more:
bq. Now per­son­al­ly it has always wor­ried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peace­mak­er (by anal­o­gy with Bonhoeffer’s
con­cept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writ­ing, demon­strat­ing about peace is in no
way tak­ing risks like young ser­vice men in iraq. I look for excus­es why I should not become involved with
CPT or EAPPI. Per­haps the read­ers will sup­ply mewith­with some?
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’m occas­sion­al­ly cha­tised for being more con­cerned about west­ern vic­tims of vio­lence (indeed, how many iraqis were abduct­ed or killed this week­end alone?). It’s a fair charge and an impor­tant reminder. But per­haps it is only human nature to wor­ry about those you know. I’ve prob­a­bly met Nor­man in pass­ing at one or anoth­er inter­na­tion­al peace gath­er­ing; I might well know the three uniden­ti­fied abductees. I sus­pect a peace move­ment vet­er­an like Kem­ber would be the first to tell me that paci­fists should­n’t sit con­tent­ed­ly in middle-class com­fy arm­chairs sim­ply sout­ing slo­gans or dash­ing off emails (Quak­er Johan Mau­r­er, wrote an “impas­sioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the rea­son folks put them­selves on the lines for orga­ni­za­tions like Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams is that they want to do their peace wit­ness among those fac­ing the vio­lence. When the vic­tims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the fam­i­lies of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary casu­al­ties have been telling us. Now, with Kem­ber and the three oth­ers miss­ing, our wor­ry is made more real. For bet­ter or worse, the peace move­ment is scan­ning the head­lines from iraq with even more wor­ry tonight.
Our prayers are with Kem­ber, as they are with all the miss­ing and all the vic­tims of this hor­ri­ble war.