APPEAL FOR THE LIBERATION OF SIMONA PARI AND SIMONA TORRETTA

FROM THE ITALIAN PEACE MOVEMENT.

We, the Italian peace movement, we who are the brothers and sisters of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, peace workers in Iraq, ask those who are holding them and their two Iraqi co-workers, Ra’ad Ali Abdul-Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam, to release them immediately. We beg you to consider the untold damage your actions are inflicting on the cause of peace and of the Iraqi people.

We endorse the words of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy: “Bear witness to the debt of gratitude towards those who shared the suffering of the Iraqis during the years of the sanctions, who stayed in the country while bombs were raining down, who refused to abandon the country even during these last, horrible months of confusion and violence.”

We entreat you not to sever the bond of solidarity which - despite and against the economic sanctions and war, despite the decisions of our Italian government - people like our sisters have built and strengthened, bravely and with determination, for example organizing the delivery of drinking water to the inhabitants of the besieged cities of Falluja and Najaf.

“A Bridge to Baghdad”, their NGO, together with hundreds of social and political organisations in our country, were the organizers of enormous demonstrations in favour of peace and calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; they did everything they could to avoid leaving the Iraqi people alone under the arbitrary rule of the occupying forces.

In the name of this struggle, in the name of truth, we beg you: release them immediately.

We ask the Iraqi people and all peace-loving people in the world, and in Italy, to help us in the effort to save the lives of Simona Pari, Simona Torretta, Ra’ad Ali Abdul-Aziz, Mahnaz Bassam. They were in Baghdad in our name, in the name of us all. Today, we are all captives, we are all in their prison with them.

Their release would shed a ray of light in this dark night of violence. As we write, in many Iraqi cities, war is still causing innocent victims. For this reason we continue to call for an end to all fighting, an end to the occupation.

Mobilization, pressure, lobbying, appeals, candlelight vigils, messages to governments - these are the tools we, the peace-loving people, can use. Let us use them all, now.

We ask the Italian peace movement to take to the streets, in every city, immediately, with the rainbow colours of our peace flags and in the name of our sisters and brothers who have been kidnapped in Iraq.

7 September 2004.
The Italian “Stop the War” Committee, which organized the mass demonstrations on 15 February 2003 and 20 March 2004.

A Bridge to Baghdad.