PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, May 16, 2012

Pray for Palestinian prisoners on a hunger strike to protest detention without charges or trials, and other punishments. CPT members joined the fast May 15, the anniversary of the 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

The organizers hoped that the Green Festival would bring some of these issues to the attention of the Kurds of Suleimaniya.  And they were successful.  Around 2000 people left their leisurely stroll around the park to listen to Kurdish and American music and look at the displays.  They were able to see that the ubiquitous 250-millilitre water bottle could be threaded onto a wooden frame to create a green house.  They heard from high school students that wind and solar power might work well in the region.  They saw the advantages of placing trash into receptacles that would go to the dump.  They took in the beauty, through nature photographs and paintings, of their region, which reminded them that they must find ways of preserving it.

CPTnet
11 May 2012
AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) ACTION ALERT: Fast with the prisoners of Palestine

On Monday 7 May 2012, the Israeli High Court of Justice denied the petition of two hunger-striking Palestinians against their administrative detention, meaning the Israeli authorities have never charged them with any crime or given them a trial.  The two prisoners continue their hunger strike, are now on their seventy-fifth day, and are in critical condition.  Their attorneys said they were not allowed to see classified material that the state had cited as grounds for imprisonment.

One thousand six hundred prisoners joined the hunger strike and are now in their twenty-fourth day.   The prisoners are demanding an end to administrative detention, solitary confinement and other punitive punishment measures taken against Palestinian prisoners, including the denial of family and lawyer visits, especially to prisoners from the Gaza Strip to whom the Israeli authorities have denied family visits since 2007.

Prisoners have  face harsh collective punishment from the beginning of the hunger strike.  Some have received fines between 250 (€50) and 500 (€100) shekels for each day of their  strike.  In Naqab prison, prisoners are experiencing daily random inspections that last for approximately forty to fifty minutes.  These inspections include cell and body searches.  In addition, prisoners are no longer permitted to leave their rooms for the daily break period. 

This 15 May 2012 marks the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, when pre-Israeli state paramilitary forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948.  The annual Nakba fast this year is focusing on the plight of the prisoners.  CPT Palestine is gravely concerned about the health of the prisoners and in an act of solidarity, team members will be joining the fast.  The  team invites you to join the fast from 7:00 a.m. on 15 May.

In the regional capitol of Erbil/Hawler, the team conducted an action at the entrance to KRG Parliament facilities with banners, posters, and a flyer with a message and a photo of Internally Displaced Persons in the riverbed camp they were forced into last spring.  At the Turkish and Iranian consulates, also in Erbil/Hawler, the team explained that suspending attacks on villages for the entire year would be a courageous and compassionate response by powerful governments to the challenges they recognize in the continuing struggle to secure their national sovereignty.

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, May 9, 2012

Give thanks for the CPT Holy Week delegation to Southern Bolivar, Colombia. Pray for delegation members as they work in solidarity with communities ravaged by internal conflict with their lands coveted by armed groups for their wealth of natural resources.

At 8:30 on the morning of 2 May 2012, the team received a call from a friend in the Beqa’a valley to inform the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron the Israeli military was destroying his cousin’s reservoir. Two CPTers went to the valley. Upon arriving, they saw two army vehicles, two intelligence service vehicles, and a power shovel digging up the ground on the hill below the friend’s house and filling dump trucks with this material. The friend told them to follow the truck.

Colombians increasingly see our 1991 Constitution as a mirage.  The illusion is evident when seen from areas as hard-hit by armed conflict as southern Bolívar province's San Lucas mountains—a mining area at the epicenter of a complex war that at times leaves it unclear who pulled the trigger.  The only thing always clear is that the peasant miner, farmer, or ordinary resident of the region generally is the one who ends up worse off.  But in spite of these odds, the locals continue to claim a willingness to pay the ultimate price to remain on these lands that and their Guamoco and Zenu ancestors have long inhabited. 

Small-scale gold mining provides a livelihood to hundreds of families in southern Bolivar.  But the region is now in the sights of AngloGold Ashanti, one of the world's most aggressive international mining companies. Communities therefore face threats from the state ranging from industrial regulation to paramilitary activity designed to force them off the land.

On 28 April 2012, Julián Gutiérrez Castaño from the Aboriginal Justice Team of Christian Peacemaker Teams joined the March for Peace, Friendship, and Respect at Caledonia, Ontario.

More than five hundred people gathered at the grounds of Edinburgh Square and Heritage Cultural Centre in the early afternoon to participate in the March for Peace, Friendship and Respect organized by the April 28^th Coalition.  Haudenosaunee from the Six Nations of the Grand River and non-Indigenous people who live in nearby Caledonia met up with others who came for the march on buses from Toronto, St. Catherine’s, London, Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, Dunnville, and Brantford.

So often we cannot fathom the dire consequences of wars in faraway places: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia. The tentacles of militarism reach into people's everyday lives in these countries, making simple tasks dangerous.  Meanwhile, people in affluent countries can spend days, weeks, months, years without experiencing what war feels like but still benefit from the resources in places torn by conflict. Like Doubting Thomas, we say, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in their hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in their sides, I will not believe" (John 20: 25). We can live our whole lives like this—intentionally covering our eyes not to see the ugliness of war. But Jesus calls us out of our blindness.  

This July, CPT Colombia is hosting a delegation focusing on the experiences of women in this war. Delegates will participate in the forty-year anniversary celebration of our partners in the Popular Women's Organization (OFP). The OFP is a grassroots women-led initiative that focuses on female leadership, programs of social uplift, supporting victims of domestic violence as well as resistance to war. Delegates will also visit women leaders in the region and explore what it means to live as a woman in the midst of armed conflict. 

Public Action by the OFP

To learn more about delegations, click here.

On May Day, 1 May, at 7:45 a.m., the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron received a phone call from Noah al-Rajabi in Bani Naim.  Al-Rajabi reported that the army and bulldozers were demolishing his cousin’s home and threatening to demolish the family’s farm. He urged CPT to come and to call the media and other internationals to bear witness to what was happening.  Two CPTers arrived at the main road near the house and saw six military jeeps, three police vehicles, and three intelligence service vehicles at the site.  Initially, the Israeli authorities prevented CPTers from approaching the scene. When they asked soldiers why they were demolishing the farm, a soldier replied, “Because we are the army.”