Christian Peacemakers, Now Hostages, Knew the Risks
By Russell Working, Chicago Tribune
Dec. 9–Before Elce Redmond visited Iraq in September, he talked to his 12-year-old son about the danger of kidnapping.
The Austin community activist knew he could end up like others from the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams now in Iraq: held by gunmen and videotaped wearing handcuffs and shackles. But peacemaking, he explained, requires a willingness to put your life in jeopardy.
“If you stand up for what you believe in, you also have to take the risk that comes along with that,” Redmond said.
His son said he understood.
This week, Redmond, 41, and others have been phoning contacts in Baghdad, desperately trying to intervene on behalf of four comrades kidnapped Nov. 26. A group called the Swords of Righteousness Brigade has threatened to kill the hostages if the United States and Iraq don’t release all Iraqi prisoners by Saturday.
In a violent world, few choose to place themselves in the line of fire without a security escort or a gun in hand. But Christian Peacemaker Teams travel in hotspots ranging from Hebron to Colombia without Kevlar vests or guards. Before going, they must sign agreements saying they understand the risk of injury, kidnapping or death.
While abroad, the peacemakers meet with community groups, act as human shields and do human rights work. They reported the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners a year before photos surfaced of U.S. troops abusing detainees in Abu Ghraib.
On the West Bank, masked assailants armed with chains and baseball bats severely beat team members last year as they escorted Palestinian children to school along a route claimed by Israeli settlers. In Colombia’s cocaine-producing regions, CPT members have stood watch in villages afraid of paramilitary attacks.
The group has never been the target of a kidnapping before, officials said, but members have been booted out of countries. The organization now must weigh whether to continue in Iraq. Several members said they hope the work will carry on in the war-torn country.
“That’s our reason for being,” said Claire Evans, delegation coordinator. “If you believe in nonviolent resolution of problems, then you have to be willing to take the same risk that soldiers take in warfare. To say we’re only interested in nonviolence in safe situations, that just lacks integrity. Our faith tells us to be serious enough about it to take the risks.”
The volunteers come from around the world. The captives include Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Va.; Canadians Jim Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32; and Britain Norman Kember, 74. In the past week, a Frenchman and a German woman not involved in the group have also been kidnapped in Iraq.
CPT has its roots in peace churches, such as Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, but its members now include other Protestants, Roman Catholics and even some more secular peace activists, such as Redmond. Many are motivated by the belief that Jesus clearly taught that killing is a sin.
The group traces its origins to a 1984 speech to the Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France, by Ron Sider, a Christian author and social activist. While Mennonites and other Anabaptist churches have a 450-year tradition of pacifism, Sider called for a bolder approach in confronting violence–one that entails not merely conscientious objection to military service but a willingness to “die by the thousands” for peace.
“What CPT is saying in Iraq is that every person is precious in the sight of God, and that includes Iraqis,” Sider, who is president of the Pennsylvania-based Evangelicals for Social Action, said in a phone interview. “We know from history that very powerful nations regularly claim to be doing universally good things, but in fact regularly act in their own self interest, and they do that in ways that are wrong and harmful to other people.”
By 1988 Christian Peacemaker Teams had an office and staff, and the organization now has about 40 fulltime staff and team members. It opened in Chicago because founding director Gene Stoltzfus lived in the city at the time (he now who now lives in Fort Frances, Canada).
CPT operates out of an office in an old brick house on 2751 W. 16th. Desks overflow with reports on countries, leaflets advertising upcoming trips and information about peace activities locally. The workers gather daily for a lunch they cook.
The organization also maintains a Canadian office in Toronto, as well as field offices in Northwest Ontario, the West Bank, Colombia, Iraq and Arizona, where volunteers provide water, shelter and other aid to illegal immigrants crossing the border.
Most CPT volunteers serve a three-year term, although stints in the field are limited to a few months at a time, said founding CPT director Gene Stoltzfus. Roughly 160 people serve as “reservists” and are willing to travel to dangerous sites for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months.
Stoltzfus, who is retired but is fielding media calls for CPT this week, said the group began investigating mistreatment of prisoners in 2003 because Iraqis kept reporting missing relatives.
Stoltzfus recalls one Iraqi at another non-profit agency telling him, “Can you help us? Here is the situation. My relative just had three people picked up and his house was torn apart.”
Stoltzfus met the relative, a doctor whose three sons were arrested during a U.S. military raid. One of the young men heard shooting and thought it was bandits. He began firing a rifle in the air to scare them off, the doctor told Stoltzfus, and U.S. troops came and led all three sons away. The doctor insisted his sons were not involved in the insurgency.
CPT members tracked down the men, who were eventually released. That year the team produced a report on prison abuses.
The group is not without its critics. Israelis have accused Christian Peacemaker Teams of failing to take Palestinian suicide bombings as seriously as they do Israeli Defense Forces actions against Palestinians, and of failing to hold Palestinians accountable for human rights abuses. Reached by phone this week, an Israeli government spokesman declined to comment, saying he did not wish to place the hostages at further risk in Iraq.
But in a 2003 article for the Jerusalem Post, New Republic writer Yossi Klein Halevi suggested that the team in Hebron, whom he had visited, embraced a simplistic story of oppressors and the oppressed. Jews had lived in Hebron for millennia, but for centuries they had been treated as second-class citizens and were driven out in a 1929 pogrom.
“The good people of the CPT had never heard of those facts. Nor were they particularly interested: Their Hebron began in 1967,” Halevi wrote. “But that shouldn’t be surprising. On the wall of their apartment was a map of the Middle East which didn’t contain the name ‘Israel.’”
Stoltzfus said the group has placed people in Jerusalem to respond to Palestinian attacks, but they didn’t seem to accomplish much, so they were pulled back to Hebron, where they were needed.
“I’m sure that we appear to some Israelis as way too partisan,” he said, “but other Israelis are happy with our balance and would even prefer that we be more militant” on behalf of Palestinians.
In Colombia, guerillas, paramilitaries and other groups often kill union leaders, journalists and human rights workers after broadcasting death threats over the radio, said John Volkening, a 55-year-old Chicago resident who has been to the South American nation twice. CPT members have accompanied those who were threatened, as a deterrent.
The volunteers have intervened when paramilitaries show up to kidnap people, and the peacemakers have fished from the river the bodies of those killed by death squads. Locals are afraid to do so, fearing reprisal from whichever group did the killing.
Volkening, a mental health caseworker with Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, says the team makes a difference.
“CPTers really go out and put their lives on the line,” he said.
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