US-UK Occupation of Iraq Responsible for Abductions, says Christian Peacemakers

|TOP|Christian Peacemaker Teams have issued a statement condemning the U.S.-U.K. led invasion and occupation of Iraq, following the airing of the latest video tape this week showing the CPT members taken hostage in the country last November.

In the statement the Christian Peacemakers attributed the abduction of their colleagues primarily to the “U.S. and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq,” reports Ekklesia.

The CPT members said they would continue to pray for the safe and speedy release of their abducted colleagues so that they may return to their families and continue on their peace-building work on behalf of all Iraqi detainees.

Around 100 people gathered in Trafalgar Square in London on the 4th and 5th of March, to hold a silent vigil marking 100 days since Briton Norman Kember was taken hostage in Iraq.

During the hour-long vigil, prayers were said for the safe release of the 74-year-old peace activist and his fellow captives who were kidnapped with during a mission in Baghdad by a group demanding the release of Iraqi prisoners.

|QUOTE|Rev Alan Betteridge, president of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and a friend of Mr Kember's for over 40 years, said churches throughout the UK had been asked to open their doors this weekend to allow people to pray for the hostages.

"It has been a weekend for prayer but also raising awareness of the situation because there is no news from Baghdad and so it's easy to forget the hostages," he said.

A grainy 55-second film showed three of the four hostages when it was broadcast on Al-Jazeera earlier in the week.

"On the one hand you are glad they are still alive but on the other you wonder what is happening to them after 100 days," Rev Alan Betteridge said.

In the statement, the Christian Peacemaker Teams said: "In vigils around the world, people came together to honour our missing colleagues and to call for their safe release" the statement said.

"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.

|AD|“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 neighbours 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."