VOICES FOR CREATIVE NONVIOLENCE E-NEWSLETTER
JUNE 2, 2009
1) A WEAVER’S TALE by Kathy Kelly
A five person Voices delegation is currently in Pakistan, learning first hand the impact upon Pakistani citizens of the expanding war in South Asia. Kathy writes from Islamabad, Pakistan:
“Fighting between the Pakistani military and the Taliban had intensified. Terrified by aerial bombing and anxious to leave before a curfew would make flight impossible, the family packed all the belongings they could carry and fled on foot. It was a harrowing four day journey over snow-covered hills. Leaving their village, they faced a Taliban check point where a villager trying to leave had been assassinated that same morning. Fortunately, a Taliban guard let them pass. Walking many miles each day, with 45 children and 22 women, they supported one another as best they could. Men took turns carrying a frail grandmother on their shoulders. One woman gave birth to her baby, Hamza, on the road. When they arrived, exhausted, at a rest stop in the outskirts of Islamabad, they had no idea where to go next.”
Read Kathy’s article on the Voices website: http://vcnv.org/a-weaver-s-welcome
2) BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE: SEEKING ASYLUM AND A BETTER LIFE
Hanna Inger Win writes an extensive, in-depth article for the LA Weekly on the struggles encountered by Iraqi refugees living in California.
“Athar Luaebi, a cashier in one of the Main Street grocery stores, is a pretty young woman with strawberry-blond curls and blue eyeliner. She moved to the U.S. from Iraq five years ago and spends her shift ringing up Iraqi spices, sweets and other provisions for one Iraqi family after another. When a journalist asks about Iraqi refugees, she points out Sami Bhw, 37, who wears jeans, a T-shirt and flip-flops. On this day, Bhw has been in the United States for less than five months but appears to fit in perfectly. Bhw, with Luaebi translating, says he fled Iraq because extremists surrounded his house and tried to kidnap his 10-year-old son. Bhw’s neighbors managed to protect the child. Fearing another kidnapping attempt, the family left everything behind and fled to Turkey. After four years, struggling to make ends meet without a work permit, Bhw and his family came to the United States as refugees.”
Read the complete article on-line: http://www.laweekly.com/2009-05-21/news/between-iraq-and-a-hard-place
3) FROM BAGHDAD TO ISLAMABAD by Gene Stoltzfus
Gene Stoltzfus (Director Emeritus of Christian Peacemaker Teams) is on the delegation to Pakistan and writes from Islamabad:
“This morning I travelled to Rawalpindi, the partner city to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, just to the North. Near the city center we noted Liaquat National Bagh, the park where Benazir Bhutto the then leading candidate for Prime Minister was gunned down in Dec. 2007. At the moment that I passed the Park with its history of blood, a massive explosion was occurring in Lahore several hours further south. Lahore is the city of Punjabi arts, sometimes called the Garden of the Moghuls, the one time rulers of India.”
Read Gene’s complete article on the Voices website, http://vcnv.org/from-baghdad-to-islamabad
Gene’s blog is at: http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com
4) AFGHANISTAN’S UNTOLD STORY
Ryan Croken reviews the book “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story” for Truthout. He writes:
“America has many virtues; collective memory is not one of them. When history is invoked in the theater of the mass media, it generally appears as either sanitized nostalgia from our civic religion (something about the Founding Fathers), or as a one-sided flashback designed to give some oomph to some -ism (something about Hitler). Pandemic amnesia is a dangerous affliction for a democracy under any circumstances, but when it comes to our current - that is, our continuing - engagement with Afghanistan, the disorder may very well prove fatal.”
Read Ryan’s complete review at http://www.truthout.org/053109Y
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
1249 W Argyle St Chicago, IL 60640
Phone: 773-878-3815 Email:
Website: www.vcnv.org