Community Peacemaker Teams
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is an international organization set up to support teams of peace workers in conflict areas around the world. These teams work to lower the levels of violence through human rights documentation, accompaniment of threatened civilians and nonviolence training. A full time corps of over 30 activists who work in Colombia, Iraq, the West Bank and Ontario, Canada. These teams are supported by over 150 reservists who spend 2 weeks to 2 months a year on location.
CPT has its roots in the historic peace churches of North America, but today has a broad ecumenical base among many Christian denominations and works in partnership with Jewish, Muslim and secular peace organizations around the world. A large component of CPT's work is educating churches across North America about the situations in which CPTers work and advocating for a more engaged peace witness.
History
The inspiration for the group came from Ron Sider at the Mennonite World Conference in 1984. At it, Sider criticized Mennonites and Brethren in Christ for reducing their peace witness to simple conscientious objection:
Unless we Mennonites and Brethren in Christ are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we really never meant what we said...
Unless comfortable North American and European Mennonites and Brethren in Christ are prepared to risk injury and death in nonviolent opposition to the injustice our societies foster and assist in Central America, the Philippines, and South Africa, we dare never whisper another word about pacifism to our sisters and brothers in those desperate lands...
Unless we are prepared to pay the cost of peacemaking, we have no right to claim the label or preach the message.[1]
After a series of meetings, Gene Stoltzfus was hired as the first staff person for the new organization in 1987. Over the next few years CPT trainings and conferences explored various models for international peacemaking. In 1990, just before the Gulf War, CPT sent a team of 13 to Iraq for 10 days. This delegation proved to be the first of a number the group sent its first delegations to Haiti, Iraq, and the West Bank.
CPT in Iraq
CPT has operated in Iraq since October 2002. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they have worked with and advocated for families of people detained by the U.S. Military and collected stories of detainee abuse. In January 2004 they released a report documenting routine abuse of Iraqi prisoners held by Coalition Provisional Authority, well before the photographs of Abu Ghraib prisoners brought international attention to the issue. [2]
Hostages
On 26 November 2005, four human rights workers associated with CPT were kidnapped in Baghdad:
- James Loney, 41, of Toronto, Canada, program coordinator for CPT Canada
- Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, of Canada, an electrical engineer and former McGill student
- Norman Kember, 74, of London, U.K., a retired professor of medical studies
- Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Virginia, U.S., a leader of youth programs at Langley Hill Friends Meeting
The four had planned to visit the Muslim Clerics Association, an influential group of Sunni religious leaders formed in 2003 after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, and were about 100 metres from the entrance to a mosque where the meeting was to take place when they were abducted. Their captors are a previously unknown group, the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The hostages were shown on a video broadcast released worldwide on 29 November by Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera. The captors branded their hostages as spies posing as Christian peace activists. The captors are threatening to kill the hostages unless the US frees all Iraqi prisoners held in the US and Iraq.
See also
References
- Brown, Tricia Gates Getting in the Way: Stories from Christian Peacemaker Teams, Herald Press, 2005.
- Gish, Arthur G. Hebron Journal: Stories of Nonviolent Peacemaking, Herald Press, 2001.
External links
- Christian Peacemaker Teams - official central website for CPT
- Profile: Christian Peacemaker Teams from BBC News
- Tom Fox's blog