This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news

University Holds Second Vigil for Iraq Hostages

"Rina Kashyap, a Fulbright student from India in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, reflects on Canadian hostage Harmeet Singh Sooden at the prayer vigil.
Photo by Jim Bishop

Some 70 Eastern Mennonite University students, faculty, staff and community persons gathered Monday evening, Jan. 30 on Thomas Plaza of the Campus Center for a second prayer vigil on behalf of four kidnapped Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members in Iraq and others on all sides of the conflict there.

The four CPTers — Briton Norman Kember, 74, American Tom Fox, 54, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32 — were seized at gunpoint in Baghdad on Nov. 26 by a previously-unknown insurgent group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Though no deadline was set, the group said it will kill the four men unless the U.S. and Iraqi authorities released all detainees in their custody.

Fox, a native of Clearbrook, Va., took the "Strategic Nonviolence" class in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) graduate program with Lisa Schirch, associate professor of peacebuilding at EMU, in spring 2004. He has been on a mission in Iraq with CPT for the past year and a half.

The latest demand — the first word of the four CPTers since before Dec. 10, when a previous deadline set by the captors passed — came in a video aired Jan. 28 on the Aljazeera network.

The latest video, which was dated Jan. 21, showed the four CPTers standing by a wall, and then seated. They appeared to be speaking to the camera, but their voices could not be heard.

EMU held its first candlelight vigil for the four CTP hostages on Nov. 30, 2005, on the Campus Center plaza. More than 60 persons attended the vigil as a symbol of solidarity and commitment to a non-violent resolution.

"We're encouraged to learn that the CPT members held captive in Iraq are still alive, although still under grave threat," Dr. Schirch said.

" Participants in a candlelight vigil at EMU pray for the hostages and others suffering on all sides of the conflict in Iraq.
Photos by Jim Bishop

Speaking as Fox's friend and former professor, Schirch said in a prepared statement that "Tom Fox and the other Christian Peacemaker Team members are the friends and guests of the Iraqi people. I plead with those holding Tom, the other Christian Peacemaker Team members, and journalist Jill Carroll to let them go so that they may tell the world about what is happening in Iraq and may inspire others to demand an end to illegal detentions, torture and the war in Iraq."

Following comments from Schirch, Lawrence M. Yoder, professor of missiology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, led a period of impassioned prayer on behalf of the CPT hostages and all those suffering in Iraq.

"I propose that in response to these renewed threats that we give ourselves to pray earnestly for the well-being of those making the threats and all who hold people unjustly and abusively," Dr. Yoder said. "Perhaps this can include prayers that these people see a transforming vision of who God is and how God wants to make things right."

Campus ministries personnel then led vigil participants in singing and further reflection.

Fox was originally scheduled to speak about his peacebuilding work in Iraq at EMU on Feb. 16 this year, Schirch noted.

— article by: Jim Bishop; posted February 2, 2006