This is the first student newspaper article I ever did that could be described as "in-depth". I was pretty proud of it when it came out at the time. My editor wrote the introductory bit, and we published the piece as a transcript of the interview.
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The Ontarion - Features
February 2, 2006
CPT MEMBER SPEAKS OUT ON HOSTAGES IN IRAQ
Written by Meghan Moloney, with files from Kim Mackrael
Father Bob Holmes is a Toronto Priest and a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a non-denominational organization of human rights workers who travel to war zones, prisons, and communities in crisis, such as Colombia, Kenora, Hebron, Arizona, and Iraq. The organization's goal is to "reduce violence by getting in the way."
Last November, four CPT workers, Tom Fox, Norman Kember, James Loney, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, were kidnapped by a group calling itself The Swords of Righteousness Brigade.
The group demanded the release of all Iraqi prisoners held by US forces in return for the peacemakers' safe release. After a long period of silence, a fourth video of the activists appeared last weekend with a renewed demand for the release of Iraqi prisoners.
Last Sunday, more than 150 CPT members and supporters walked to the US consulate in Toronto to show their support for the CPT hostages and all Iraqi prisoners held by US forces.
Fr. Holmes is a close friend of captive James Loney of Toronto. Meghan Moloney interviewed Fr. Holmes the day before the latest video was released.
Meghan Moloney: What kind of work do you do for CPT?
Father Bob Holmes: I'm part of the support team, that support our peacemakers in the field. My specific role is coordinating pastoral support – making sure that the peacemakers stay healthy spiritually, emotionally, physically – and I just came back from Chicago, where we did a workshop on trauma awareness and self-care in war zones.
MM: Can you elaborate on how CPT came together and what its philosophies are?
BH: The Mennonite Church was challenged by one of their theologians about twenty years ago, who just confronted them and said, "Look – if we’re going to call ourselves a peace church, we have to be as willing to risk our lives for peace as soldiers are to risk their lives in war." And he challenged them to begin to gather a hundred thousand people who would be trained and ready to go at a moment’s notice into war zones and get in the way, to reduce the violence. And so over the last twenty years, we’ve developed a Christian Peacemaker Team [...] and we’ve got about two hundred who are prepared and trained to do that work. And we think it’d be wonderful if Canada just took the lead and was the first to have an unarmed force of people who were prepared to go into zones and, non-violently, to bring an end to the oppression that’s happening around the world.
MM: What does your organization gain by being non-denominational, as opposed to being affiliated with a specific sect among Christians?
BH: It gives us a much wider reach, in terms of participation. And what happens is, we base our work, really, on the hunger and thirst for justice, and to love your enemies, and so that’s the kind of Christian basics that we operate from, and it’s not based in any one church. What we discovered is that we end up in coalitions with Jewish peacemakers and Muslim peacemakers and secular peacemakers, so we discovered that there’s lots of people who have discovered that non-violent direct action is probably the best way to overcome discrimination and oppression.
MM: Why does the organization choose to keep the word ‘Christian’ as a part of its name, recognizing that perhaps in North America it may draw negative as well as positive attention?
BH: That’s true, and what we’re trying to do is draw the positive to it, and let people know that there are Christians who don’t believe in war, even though some of our neighbours to the South think that Christians should be warriors. And we are certainly not exclusive in the sense that we figure we can do it ourselves – we don’t. We always work in coalition with others. But we draw our motivation from the gospel – we pray, you know, we gather every morning and we worship, and that prayer gives us the courage and the strength and the will to go out and to risk our lives for peace. And so that’s an important thing for us. But we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslims and Jews and seculars.
MM: Concerning the four peacemakers who were taken in Iraq, what were their reasons for going to Iraq specifically, and what was their function there?
BH: Iraq is a place where there’s a tremendous amount of violence, and it’s good for Americans and Canadians to be there because it’s Westerners that have really brought the violence in its present form. The U.S. invasion and occupation has caused a huge wave of violence in that country. So we feel that we ought to be there to do what we can to reverse it and to reduce that violence, and we do that, number one, just by our presence – by being there, and by suffering that vulnerability with the Iraqis, then we are able to speak more authentically when we come back home about what’s really going on there. And secondly, we shine a spotlight on the violence and we’re able to say, look, this is not right, the Geneva conventions are not being observed here, people are being held in prison without charge and without their families knowing where they are for months and months and months, and that’s just not allowed. Sixteen thousand people were being detained when I was there, and I presume it’s a similar number now. So we called not so much for their release but for justice to be built into that system, so that people are charged and have a chance to confront those charges and if they’re not guilty, to be released.
MM: In retrospect, given all of these reasons for their presence, and given what eventually happened to four of them, do you feel that it was still worthwhile – was it the right decision for them to go?
BH: Well, of course. We knew the risks long before we went – we’d been there for three years. Now we were there before the invasion – I’ve been there three times, this was Jim Loney’s fourth time, and I’m sure it was the fourth or fifth time for Tom Fox also. We’ve known this could always happen, so it’s not a surprise when it does happen. You don’t want it to happen, and you fear for it, but you’re willing to take that risk because someone needs to be there, and all the other international groups have left. And so, we end up working very closely with a lot of Iraqi human rights groups, and they’re delighted to have an international human rights organization that they can connect with, because it makes their voice much louder. Otherwise they don’t get heard, whereas now we can be their voice in a much wider area. And in fact, because of the four being held there, our voice has gotten incredibly loud. We are now being heard around the world.
MM: Who are you trying to reach?
BH: We’re trying to send lots of messages to George Bush and his advisors right now. That’s why for these past two weeks we’ve had the Shine the Light Campaign in Washington, DC – every day, there’s a procession from one place of violence to the White House, in order to draw attention to the White House that this war in Iraq is wrong. We've been doing the same thing in Toronto every day also, and going to the US Consulate [...] again to send a message to the United States government that what they’re doing in Iraq is wrong. The occupation is wrong, the detaining of people without charge is wrong, the torturing of people, the abuse of human rights is wrong, and the best thing they can do is get out of there.
MM: So with the final vigil on Sunday [Jan 29], what message do you hope to get across on a global scale?
BH: We want to let the whole world know that occupation can never bring peace, it can never really produce democracy. They’re trying to impose democracy through an occupation – that doesn’t happen, it can’t happen. And we also want people to be very aware that when you detain thousands and thousands of people without trial, that that doesn’t bring peace either. It creates more resistance – in fact, it’s creating terrorists, it’s creating people who are very upset with Canada – well, the United States, not so much Canada. We also really want to call for the freedom of our peacemakers. But that call, of course, is going to those who are holding our peacemakers. We’re hoping that they are very aware of what we’re doing, and that it makes them aware that the people who they are holding are actually people who want the occupation to end, and who want their detainees released, and therefore these [CPT members] should also be released.
MM: Since November, the kidnapping of the four peacemakers has gained global attention from the media. What are some of the critical questions that have been posed?
BH: You know, the typical question you get – "aren’t you being naïve to be there." And our response is no, no, we’re not being naïve at all, we’ve known exactly what the situation [is], we’ve been there three years, we know how dangerous it is. We know that four thousand Iraqis have been taken prisoner and held for ransom, so for us the risk was also the same, you know, we’re willing to bear that risk the same as they are.
MM: Muslim communities have been very supportive in protesting the kidnapping [of the CPT members], including organizations such as the Canadian Islamic Congress. How do you feel about the supportive reaction from Muslims and Iraqis, and how does that impact your efforts?
BH: We were really delighted that our Muslim friends and colleagues of people we work with were able to stand up and say to those who are holding our people, ‘let them go, because these people are really trying to help Iraqis’ –-ordinary, civilian, unarmed Iraqis. And we were delighted that those voices came out so strong, and we had no idea that so many groups were aware of who we were. Some people spoke out for us that we didn’t know even knew about us. But it tells you that they did know, and they did appreciate what we were doing, and they do know we’re non-violent, even though some of the groups that spoke out were not non-violent, they still said hey, these people are doing good work – let them go. So we were delighted with that.
MM: So now that you have the knowledge of that kind of support, does that impact the efforts that you’re making?
BH: Well yeah, I mean our effort – still, after two months – is to try to speak to the people who are holding our four peacemakers, and the only means we have of doing that is through the Arabic media. So we’ve been feeding Al Jazeera and other Arabic sources with as much information as we can, and they’ve been wonderful. They’ve been very anxious to receive it. And they will show the video footage or they’ll voice-over the radio or they’ll translate for the press. So we’re very happy with that, we’ve been getting very good coverage in their media.
MM: Is there one overall thing or one specific result of the whole campaign that you’re really proud of, that you really feel has made a difference?
BH: Well, I’m really proud of the fact that people world-wide right now, from New Zealand right through Great Britain, Canada and the United States, the English-speaking world especially, and the Arabic-speaking world, know that there are Christians who are peacemakers and who don’t believe in violence, [but] who do believe that Gandhian, Martin Luther King style – and I would say Jesus style – of actions are the solution, not violence.
