For Immediate Release
June 27, 2005

By Kathy Kelly

In Baghdad, under economic sanctions, landing a job in a hotel offered at least a steady pittance of earnings. Some men made ends meet by working two eight hour shifts in different hotels. A dignified, well educated fellow would don a restaurant worker’s uniform in one hotel to serve tables all day and then quickly change into the uniform of a maintenance crew worker at the hotel across the street so that he could spend the next eight hours sweeping up cigarette butts.

But over time, in spite of the glaring disparities between their material well being and ours, durable friendships developed between members of Voices in the Wilderness delegations and the workers at hotels where we stayed. When, on rare occasions, we’d visit their homes, we’d leave wishing we could alleviate the harsh circumstances in which they lived. Especially during rainy, cold or extremely hot seasons, their homes were inadequate shelters. And they would never be able to save any money to get ahead working at the hotels.

Most of the men I knew no longer work at the hotels. Now that Baghdad is the most dangerous city in the world, random groups fire mortars, bombs, and other explosives at hotels. Some men were willing to risk staying on the job but were laid off by managers who, with few guests, couldn’t meet payrolls.

by Cathy Breen

WE HAVE COME SO FAR…are the words on one of the banners we are holding at a 2-week vigil and fast in front of the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) will be meeting here in the end of June to determine how much of a remaining $65 billion in war reparations claims will be imposed against Iraq. We have come to ask the Commission, at what point will innocent Iraqis no longer be penalized for the unjust acts of Saddam Hussein’s regime?

As I was handing out statements with the intentions of our vigil to passersby, he came towards me, and our eyes met in joyful recognition. Raad, our friend and “stargazer,” who looked from his rooftop in Baghdad at the constellations and planets between the bombings. When we left Iraq after the horror of “Shock and Awe,” we took his words with us, “We must continue to celebrate the universe.”

How long has it been since we’ve seen one another, a year and a half perhaps? How much has transpired in that time? Together with two Italian women and another Iraqi woman colleague, Raad had been kidnapped in early September of 2004 in the offices of Bridges to Baghdad. At one point during their 3-week captivity, we had received the news that they had most likely been killed. I remember how we grieved on that day. You can imagine then our relief and jubilation, and that of his family, upon their release.