Statement by the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) condemning the recent string of hostage-takings in Iraq

 

8th September 2004

 

The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) strongly condemns yesterday’s kidnapping of the two Italian aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, and their two Iraqi colleagues, Raad Ali Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam, who were abducted by unidentified armed gunmen from their office in the centre of Baghdad in broad daylight. The two kidnapped Italian aid workers work for the Italian humanitarian group ‘A Bridge for Baghdad’ and have been involved in taking oxygen and water to hospitals and helping to reconstruct schools.

The hostage-taking comes as French authorities continue to negotiate the release of the two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in Iraq over a fortnight ago.

More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since March 2003. Most have been freed but 25 were killed, often in gruesome fashion – among them a Turkish laundry worker, a South Korean translator, an American businessman, two Pakistanis, two Bulgarian truck drivers, an Italian journalist and 12 Nepalese workers.

PNGO strongly condemns the hostage-taking of civilians to attain political goals and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held in Iraq.

PNGO considers the act of hostage-taking to be harmful to the liberation of Iraq and Iraq’s just struggle for self-determination and freedom, apart from being detrimental to the Arab cause as a whole.

PNGO calls on all Palestinian civil society organizations to show solidarity with the victims and their families by raising their voices and explicitly condemning the hostage-takings in Iraq.

PNGO urges Iraqi civil society organizations to use all available means to bring about the immediate release of the hostages currently held in Iraq and to work on preventive measures to ensure that such acts are not repeated.

 

Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)