Italian Iraq Hostages Are Peace Activists

Comitato italiano Fermiamo la Guerra
(the Italian "Committee Stop the War", organiser of the marches of February 15th 2003 and March 20th 2004)

Un ponte per Baghdad
(A Bridge to Baghdad)

Rome, September 7th 2004

We, the Italian peace movement, the brothers and sisters of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who are doing their work of peace activists in Iraq, are asking the people who are holding them together with the two Iraqi volunteers, Ra'ad Ali Abdul-Aziz and Manhaz Bassam, to free them immediately. We ask you to consider how much you are harming the cause of peace and of the Iraqi people.

As the Union of the Islamic Communities in Italy stated, "show that you are grateful towards those who have shared the suffering of the Iraqi people during the years of the Embargo, who stayed in the country when bombs were falling from the sky, who have not abandoned the country even in these horrible months of confusion and violence."

We ask you not to break the thread of solidarity, which in spite of and against Embargo and war, in spite of the choices of our government, people like our sisters have been maintaining thoroughly and bravely, as they did by bringing water to the besieged populations in Falluja and Najaf.

"Un ponte per Baghdad" ("A bridge to Baghdad"), their NGO, together with hundreds of social and political organisations in our country, has been organising huge demonstrations for peace and for the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Iraq and has been doing its best not to abandon the Iraqi people to the violence of the military occupation.

In the name of this struggle and of this truth, we implore you: free them immediately.

We ask the Iraqi people and all peace loving people in the world and in Italy to help us in the attempt to save the lives of Simona Pari, of Simona Torretta, of Ra'ad Ali Abdul-Aziz, of Manhaz Bassam. They were in Baghdad in the name of all of us. Today we feel like being imprisoned with them.

Their release would be a spot of light in the darkness of violence. Even in this very moment, in many Iraqi cities, the war is taking its toll of innocent victims. Therefore we continue to ask firmly for the arms to stop firing and for an end to the occupation.

Any kind of mobilisation, of pressure, calls and demonstrations and whatsoever initiatives, messages to the respective governments, these are the means at the disposal of people acting for peace. Let us use them all, now.

We call on the Italian movement to gather in the streets, in every city, right now, with the colours of the rainbow of peace and in the name of our sisters and brothers who were kidnapped in Iraq.

ENDS