I'm looking for some Fast Friends for August 19th. That date would have been the fifteenth birthday of Abeer Qassim Hamza.
Fast friends will engage in a public candlelight vigil and fast as an act of sorrow, to honor the woman/ child who never made it to adulthood. The fast will create discomfort, and every pang will be offered as a longing for peace.
This idea was born in the comment sections under my diary/ poem:
http://www.dailykos.com/... ; yesterday and the diary of Lying eyes hard look through the eyes of Abeer Qassim Hamza:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I had intended to post a diary on this today. Waking to the news, on the Rachel Maddow show, of a video showing what is purported to be the two American Soldiers who were kidnapped, tortured and killed, cemented my resolve.
The Washington Post quoted:
The internet statement from the Mujahedeen Shura Council says the soldiers were killed "as a revenge for our sister, whose honor was violated by one of the soldiers belonging to the same battalion."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And yet the American military is attempting to diffuse the effects of the video by claiming they have found no connection between the rape and murder of Abeer and her family and the kidnapping. The video, claiming responsiblity, creates a connection whether the military wants to admit it or not. Their claim that news of the atrocity wasn't released till after the soldiers' bodies were found is not convincing. News travels rapidly, by word of mouth in Iraq. People are not glued to their TV's and the computer internet, like we Americans are. Many Iraqi don't even have electricity now.
In the same article the atrocity is named without even mentioning who it was commited against.:
Military authorities have charged four active-duty soldiers with premeditated rape and murder for the March attack near Mahmudiyah. A fifth soldier was charged with dereliction of duty and making a false statement for allegedly failing to report the incident. A sixth man, a former private, pleaded not guilty last week in Louisville to federal charges of rape and murder.
There is some perverse notion that depersonalizing what happened will deaden the outrage. This is cowardly and dispicable. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney must stand up and issue a full facing international apology to the Iraqi people for this horror, and every one like it.
Particularily to the brothers of Abeer who experienced the horror of finding their parents and little sister slaughtered, and their older sister half naked, burned and bloody. Those images must be burned forever in their consciousness.
As American Citizens, we can stand as Fast Friends, and give up something on Abeer's birthday. We can give up solid food, like the Code Pink Community is doing for peace right now.
:
Code Pink Community...
We can offer an apology from our hearts, and demand our leaders do the same.
Stop the war, bring the troops home fast. Sign up below in the Comment section to commit to a fast and vigil in your area on August 19th.
Let Abeer's birthday help to give birth to peace in Iraq.
Note: I changed the title of this diary, to give proper focus to the issue... thanks.
I cross posted this diary at:
Choice Changes