SkyAboveYou
08-03-2005, 12:22 PM
" The other one brings a cotton sheet and unfolds the blanket, covers her with the sheet and then replaces the blanket around her: tucked in by the Mujahedin. "
Before the war and before we came to Falluja the first time I remember feeling that it’s impossible to know how you’ll react to something like being under fire. I couldn’t have imagined either how I’d react to this, this unpredictable situation, these masked and armed men, the fear, the uncertainty. Repeatedly they tell us not to be afraid, “We are Moslems. We will not hurt you.”
Jo Wilding, 30, was one of the most famous foreign activists in Iraq during the period from November 2003 through May 2004.
A human rights campaigner, writer, and trainee lawyer from Bristol, UK, she first came to Iraq in August 2001, with Voices in the Wilderness, to break the sanctions, as an act of civil disobedience, and to get a perspective on what was happening, for the purpose of advocacy work in the UK. In November 2002, she forced the UK Customs and Excise to take her to court for breaking the sanctions. It was the first time that the legality of the sanctions had been considered directly by a British court. (Wilding also appeared in court in March 2001 for throwing fruit at Tony Blair in a protest against the sanctions.)
She returned to Iraq as an independent observer in February 2003 and stayed for the month before the war and the first 11 days of the bombing as a human shield, before being expelled by the Iraqi foreign ministry as part of a purge of independent foreigners. She returned to Iraq again in November 2003 -- after the US-led invasion in March of 2003 -- and left in May 2004.
Her writings about Iraq and its ordinary people were published in the Guardian, the New Zealand Herald, Counterpunch, and many other media outlets.
Click here to read what she wrote about her experience as a hostage, describing her kidnappers as “courteous.” (http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/115/index.php)
You may also click here to read one of Jo Wilding’s most widely circulated articles (http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/114/index.php), which provides her account of the April 2004 US siege of Fallujah.
Before the war and before we came to Falluja the first time I remember feeling that it’s impossible to know how you’ll react to something like being under fire. I couldn’t have imagined either how I’d react to this, this unpredictable situation, these masked and armed men, the fear, the uncertainty. Repeatedly they tell us not to be afraid, “We are Moslems. We will not hurt you.”
Jo Wilding, 30, was one of the most famous foreign activists in Iraq during the period from November 2003 through May 2004.
A human rights campaigner, writer, and trainee lawyer from Bristol, UK, she first came to Iraq in August 2001, with Voices in the Wilderness, to break the sanctions, as an act of civil disobedience, and to get a perspective on what was happening, for the purpose of advocacy work in the UK. In November 2002, she forced the UK Customs and Excise to take her to court for breaking the sanctions. It was the first time that the legality of the sanctions had been considered directly by a British court. (Wilding also appeared in court in March 2001 for throwing fruit at Tony Blair in a protest against the sanctions.)
She returned to Iraq as an independent observer in February 2003 and stayed for the month before the war and the first 11 days of the bombing as a human shield, before being expelled by the Iraqi foreign ministry as part of a purge of independent foreigners. She returned to Iraq again in November 2003 -- after the US-led invasion in March of 2003 -- and left in May 2004.
Her writings about Iraq and its ordinary people were published in the Guardian, the New Zealand Herald, Counterpunch, and many other media outlets.
Click here to read what she wrote about her experience as a hostage, describing her kidnappers as “courteous.” (http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/115/index.php)
You may also click here to read one of Jo Wilding’s most widely circulated articles (http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/114/index.php), which provides her account of the April 2004 US siege of Fallujah.