CPTnet
May 24, 2004
IRAQ/AMMAN UPDATE: May 3-6, 2004
[The team in Iraq writes, "Due to the exceptionally high interest in team
activity right now, we are submitting longer updates than usual. We hope
this will be helpful for our readers and apologize for any difficulties the
frequency and length these updates might cause.]
Monday, May 3
Vriesinga and Le Anne Clausen returned to Baghdad by plane. At the
checkpoint leading out of the airport, U.S. soldiers would not allow the
person driving the CPT workers home to come through the
checkpoint to meet them. The soldiers also would not allow the CPT workers
to call the driver on the phone to tell him what was happening. When
Clausen and Vriesinga tried to walk to where the driver was, about a
quarter-kilometer away, the soldiers would not allow them to leave. The CPT
workers said, "We will wait a few minutes if you call down and allow our
driver through, otherwise we will have to walk." The soldier did not appear
to call to the other checkpoint. After ten minutes, they began to walk
towards the car.
When they reached the second checkpoint, soldiers stopped them again and
told them to go back. The CPT workers explained their problem and agreed to
wait if the soldiers would allow the car through. This time, the soldiers
went to find the car and let him through.
The friend who came to pick them up said he had just taken two U.S.
journalists to Najaf the previous day and said locals, including
representatives of Shi'a opposition cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, welcomed them
warmly. The representatives told them that they will give anyone permission
to be in the city for one week to speak with people. The representatives
also offered armed guards to any foreigners who wanted to visit. The team
members told their
friend, "No thanks."
The friend also said that his own brother, a prominent Shi'a cleric, was
detained during a raid on a human rights organization in Hilla (Babylon) a
few days earlier. The organization was holding a community meeting attended
by all the local religious and political party leaders. During the raid, he
said that U.S. soldiers stood two Shi'a clerics up against a wall and shot
them. [Team members heard this incident reported on television news while
in Amman.] Another man was detained along with his brother. Vriesinga and
Clausen offered to help with the case.
After Clausen and Vriesinga arrived at the CPT apartment, two friends of the
team who are peace workers from the U.S. and Britain came to visit. The
U.S. worker, who also teaches English at Baghdad University said, "Every
time I go to class, I feel I need to apologize because the Americans have
done something stupid again." She recently moved into a women's dormitory
on campus and said that the students there have been shy but curious and
have made her feel welcome.
NBC news called to ask for contacts with released detainees CPT has
interviewed.
Vriesinga was interviewed by CTV (Canadian TV) about CPT's perspective on
the detainee abuse photos. The journalist commented, "We should have asked
you about your detainee work four months ago."
While on the roof in the evening, CPT workers could hear several mortars
being fired into Coalition headquarters across the river. Later, they heard
several muted explosions in the distance.
Clausen and Vriesinga noticed that the team apartment had been substantially
cleaned and rearranged since they left. The team's landlord told Clausen,
"We seriously thought you were not coming
back."
A female friend of the team came to visit and picked up U.S. visa papers
another friend had left for her. She said, "I am hopeless here. They [the
U.S. soldiers] are treating us like slaves under this occupation." She
hopes to leave for two or three years until the situation gets better. She
also told them that the distant explosions were U.S. warplanes bombing the
Daura neighborhood of Baghdad.
The team's landlady brought sweets to welcome them back. She told them,
"The situation is getting worse every day, they are kidnapping Christians
again." She said most of the other renters in the building would return by
the following week. Clausen and Vriesinga told her that several
international organizations were returning to Iraq over the next few weeks.
She said she felt better after hearing of the organizations' prospective
return.
The son of the landlord told Clausen and Vriesinga not to go walking alone
or linger outside the building. "Be careful even when walking on this
street," he said. "There may be kidnappers. They may want to kidnap not
just foreigners, but my father also."
Tuesday, May 4
In Amman, Sheila Provencher visited a church near the team's apartment and
discovered Caritas International, which has community centers in Amman,
Baghdad, and several other cities. In Amman, the group runs a free clinic
and other assistance programs that focus on refugees from Iraq. Provencher
spoke with a Jordanian woman physician, and a German woman who runs the
center. The German woman was grave about the situation in Iraq, and advised
CPT to be extremely cautious.
The team received a copy via e-mail of an article in a Christian magazine
noting that CPT had been raising detainee rights issues for several months
prior to the release of the photographs. Mark Frey in the CPT Chicago
office commented, "Is there a polite way of saying, 'We told you so?'"
In Baghdad, there was no electricity for most of the morning and the
previous night. Later, a visiting friend told Clausen and Vriesinga that
the electricity was reduced substantially since the first of the month and
was now on a cycle of "three hours on, three hours off."
A team translator came to report on his recent visit to Kerbala to explore
work for the team there. He said that the team had enthusiastic invitations
from Shi'a clerics in the city and a local human rights organization, both
of whom CPT has worked with before. The Clausen and Vriesinga decided to
travel there Thursday.
While buying groceries, Clausen met a woman on the street who said, "We live
very, very miserable lives. Life is expensive, we have no money and no work
. . .Every day you walk in the street now, you may be killed by guns or
bombs. If you are driving and a Humvee comes, they run right over you." She
pointed up the street but did not elaborate. She then brought a severely
handicapped young girl to Clausen and said, "We can't get treatment for her
in Iraq. Can your organization help us?" Clausen replied that CPT doesn't
work in these areas, but in a few weeks other organizations that might help
may return to the country and she would ask them.
Clausen later visited a Shi'a friend who wanted to know if the pictures of
detainee abuse were real. She wondered if the soldiers were paid to stage
the photographs.
Swiss television came to get referrals for detainees who had been abused in
U.S. custody.
Wednesday, May 5
In Amman, Provencher, Matt Chandler and Greg Rollins went to a peace
conference at the Marriott Hotel. Participants came from all over the
world, and included Father Elias Chacour, a Palestinian priest active in the
peace movement.
In Baghdad, two lawyers from a human rights organization told Vriesinga and
Clausen that they were preparing for a press conference on detainee abuses
for the following Sunday and asked Clausen to review their statement. They
also asked for the team to prepare copies of its testimonies of abused
detainees.
The CPTers also met again with the father of the boy who was blinded when
U.S. forces piled explosives into a house near where the boy was playing and
blew it up [See March 16-19, 2004 update.] A California man has since
offered to bring the boy to the U.S. for treatment.
Swiss television returned to interview Clausen about detainee abuses.
Meanwhile, Vriesinga gave a phone interview to a Washington, D.C. affiliate
of CBS.
In the evening, Clausen and Vriesinga went to Kadhamiya neighborhood to
visit with Sayyid Ali al Waahd at the Kadhum shrine. While there, the
Sayyid received news that Shi'a opposition cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office
had just been attacked in Kerbala. They were unsure if the attack came from
U.S. forces or a rival militia. The Sayyid warned the team not to travel
the next day as foreigners might be suspect, but did not think it was
problematic for the translator to travel.
The Sayyid also said they were able to catch a number of people involved in
the bombing of the Kadhum shrine in early March and had handed them over to
U.S. officials. The Sayyid was worried because Paul Bremer recently met
with the father-in law of Qusay Hussein (Saddam Hussein's son), and
suggested CPT encourage Coalition officials not to return leadership of the
government to former Ba'ath party officials. He also said that the Shi'a
would not accept a government appointed by either U.S. or U.N. leaders in
place of direct elections. "Why are they afraid of a Shi'a president?" he
asked.
A reporter for the New Yorker asked the team about cases of detainees who
had been threatened or mistreated using attack or guard dogs. The reporter
was also interested in cases where soldiers had stripped detainees of their
clothing. Clausen searched the team's files and found three cases of
detainees being threatened with dogs, and ten cases where detainees were
held in their underwear throughout their time in U.S. custody. [Editors
note: Journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the U.S. soldiers'
massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1969, quoted Cliff Kindy in
the New Yorker on May 13, 2004. People may access the article at
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2.
Thursday, May 6
In Amman, team members directed a number of journalists to team members in
Baghdad for interviews about the detainee abuses. Team members also added
several reports and detainee testimonies of abuse to CPT's website
[http://www.cpt.org/iraq]
In Baghdad, the team's translator departed for Kerbala on the team's behalf
to see if the religious officials and the human rights organization still
wanted team members to come.
An older neighbor stopped Clausen in the street and asked her if she knew
about the history and culture of Iraq. For several minutes, he recited
poetry from a number of Iraqi and other poets in the Arab world. "Now they
are all gone," he said. He offered to take the team to different historical
sites and explain their significance.
Clausen gave a television interview to ABC News. Vriesinga did an interview
with 'Canada AM' for CTV. Both emphasized that human rights abuses were not
limited to Abu Ghraib prison camp or to the prisons themselves; and that
physical, verbal, and psychological abuse on the part of the U.S. military
were quite common. They also discussed the problem of 'disappeared'
detainees--people who were last seen in custody often U.S. forces and often
reported as being present in various camps by released prisoners, but who do
not appear on any roster of detainees available to their families.
A tribal sheikh, whose son U.S. forces arrested thirteen months ago, called
the team, deeply upset. "My son was seen in Abu Ghraib. I am afraid of
what they have done to him," he said, referring to the photos of detainee
abuse. "I know they tortured him to get a confession." The sheik's other
son is an officer with the Iraq Police and used his connections last fall to
find out that the detained son signed a confession in prison saying he was a
member of the Fedayeen. The son was a college student and soccer player.
Although other detainees have come to the family reporting the son was in
Bucca prison camp in southern Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison camp, the U.S.
military has not listed the son on its roster
of detainees.
The translator returned with news from the trip to Kerbala. He said that a
human rights worker would come to Baghdad to attend the press conference,
and arranged for a meeting with the Shi'a clerics in Kerbala for the
following week. The human rights worker also sent a message saying that he
was surprised by Coalition and U.S. administration officials' declaration
that they had no information that U.S. soldiers were torturing detainees.
He said that he himself had prepared a report of abuses and
delivered it to the local military base in Kerbala, Coalition officials, and
a visiting delegation of the International Red Cross in September. He also
said that he felt the U.S. administration's expressions of remorse were
purely for the elections this year and that the government would not make
lasting policy changes.
_______________
To stop receiving messages from CPTNET on MennoLink, send a message with
only the word, "suspend," in the body to server@MennoLink.org.
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an initiative of the historic peace churches
(Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Quakers) with support and
membership from a range of Catholic and Protestant denominations.
Supporting violence-reduction efforts around the world is its mandate.
Contact CPT, POB 6508 Chicago, IL 60680; Telephone: 773-277-0253 Fax:
773-277-0291; e-mail: guest.903627@MennoLink.org.
To receive news or discussion of CPT issues by e-mail, fill out the form
found on our WEB page at http://www.cpt.org/subscribe.php
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 01 2004 - 09:29:09 EDT