Marla Ruzicka, an extraordinary human rights worker who founded the “Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC),” and Faiz Ali Salim who runs CIVIC in Iraq, were killed by a suicide car bomb on a Baghdad road in Iraq on Saturday April 16th. All at Voices in the Wilderness offer our condolence and know many who Marla and Faiz befriended will join in an intense yearning. May their passion, courage and kindness stir hope. We hope that their lives will move people to ever greater care for victims of war.

Justin Alexander wrote the following on Sunday.

The Innocent Victim

Last night I went to the Hamra hotel, home to most of the foreign journalists working in Baghdad, to attend one of Marla Ruzicka famous parties. She’d told me 8.30pm, but there was no sign of her in her room or elsewhere in the hotel and I couldn’t get through to her phone. I spotted some journalists sitting by the pool and shyly enquired “Do any you know Marla?” They turned to me and laughed “Are you kidding. Of course we know Marla, everyone knows Marla!” But no one had seen her.

By Kathleen O’Malley
Christian Peacemaker Teams
14 April, 2005

We walked through the crowded Basrah markets stepping over garbage and trying to avoid pools of sewage water to get to the clinic of Dr. Al-Brhim*, an oncologist internationally known for his research on the impact of depleted uranium. I thought it had to be a mistake when we arrived at the narrow concrete stairs of a deteriorating building that led to his clinic. We waited with his patients in a small room with two worn wooden benches covered with old tattered cloth. The tile on the floor was old and cracked and the walls badly in need of repair and paint. The conditions were unsuitable for living, much less for medical care.