Transnational activists, news media representations, and racialized ‘politics of life

The Christian Peacemaker Team kidnapping in Iraq

Bibliographic Data

ID7434764
AuthorsGada Mahrouse (0000-0003-2116-6010, Concordia University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume13
Issue4
Pages311-331
Publication date2009-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621020903011005
OpenAlexW1998370305
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited45

In late 2005, four antiwar activists with a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) were kidnapped in Baghdad. Two of the men were identified as Canadian citizens, and the other two were an American and a Briton. In March 2006, after nearly four months in captivity, three of the men were rescued through a military operation involving British, American, Canadian, and Iraqi forces, and they were returned to their countries of residence. This essay explores the racialized privileges of Western citizenship status, and in particular, its deployment in transnational (referring to the physical crossing of national borders) interventions made by such activists. Moreover, this essay seeks to understand and reveal the vast distinction between those who carry the privilege of Western citizenship and those who do not, and the subversive possibilities within such asymmetrical power relations. By using media representations of this kidnapping as the focal point of the analysis, this essay explores how racialization and sexuality work together to construct both Western citizenship and national identity. Keywords: transnational solidarityracializationOrientalismactivismwhite privilegerepresentationshumanitarianismCanadian national identitysexuality Acknowledgements I would like to thank Suzanne Lenon, Aziz Choudry, the journal editors, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and comments. Notes 1. The CPT works with local partners to support those facing violence in a capacity that is often referred to as 'third-party non-violent intervention'. The goal of the CPT is to promote a world of non-violence in which all human lives are valued equally. The CPT also has active campaigns in support of marginalized peoples in the United States and Canada (the countries in which the CPT is based), although for my purposes in this study, the focus is exclusively on their projects in the Global South. Arguably, however, some of the racialized power dynamics discussed in this essay would apply to local contexts as well, such as the solidarity work with indigenous people in Canada. For more information on various CPT projects, see: http://www.cpt.org/archives/ws03.php 2. For example, the CPT has been credited for the leading role they have played in documenting the detention without due process of an estimated 14,000 Iraqis (Adamson 2006 Adamson, L., 2006. Why peace teams risk their lives. The Toronto Star [online], 29 March. Available from: http://www.npcanada.org/WhyPeaceTeamsRiskTheirLives.htm [Accessed 18 June 2009] [Google Scholar]). Furthermore, in January 2004, CPT held a press conference on their findings on abuse in Iraqi prisons, four months before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal emerged (Scrivener 2006 Scrivener, L. 2006. Getting into harm's way: Critics say group should stay out of war zone, but CPT insists it belongs in Baghdad. The Toronto Star, : A.14 26 March [Google Scholar]). 3. For detailed accounts of how each of these events unfolded from the points of view of members and supporters of the CPT, see Brown (2008 Brown, T.G., ed. 2008. 118 days: Christian Peacemaker Teams held hostage in Iraq, Toronto: Christian Peacemaker Teams. [Google Scholar]). 4. It is important to note that members of the CPT object to the term 'human shields'. An online debate posted on the CPT Website in February 2006, while the four men were still in captivity, indicates that members see the term as problematic because of the military connotations attached to the word 'shield' and because 'it places the people being protected in the role of victims, and the people doing the shielding as rescuers' (CPT 2003 CPT. 2003. Dialogue. Signs of the times, 13(1–2) Available from: http://www.cpt.org/archives/ws03.php [Accessed 26 February 2007] [Google Scholar]). Furthermore, the charged social justice-activist landscape at the turn of the twenty-first century and the widespread opposition to the US-led wars have contributed to the increasing numbers of people who have decided to 'put their passports to good use' by travelling abroad to lend support to people in other parts of the world (Brecher 2003 Brecher, J. 2003. "Globalization today". In Implicating empire: globalization and resistance in the 21st century world order, Edited by: Aronowitz, S. and Guatney, H. 199–210. New York: Basic Books. [Google Scholar], Klein 2004 Klein, N. 2004. "Moving through the symbols". In Globalize liberation: how to uproot the system and build a better world, Edited by: Solnit, D. 249–262. San Francisco: City Lights Books. [Google Scholar]). Other organizations currently or recently coordinating such initiatives in Iraq include the Iraq Peace Team; see http://vitw.org/ipt/. 5. Both Gilroy and Said have written about American Rachel Corrie who was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home in March 2003. Corrie's death provoked a charged debate regarding the effectiveness of such strategies and many have come to regard her as a symbol of hope. 6. In Canada, then Prime Minister Paul Martin (CTV.ca 30 November 2005) declared: 'I can assure Canadians that there is no more urgent priority than the safe return of our citizens', adding that he had 'instructed the minister of foreign affairs and the clerk of the Privy Council to make certain the full resources of the government of Canada are made available to this end'. 7. It is important to note that the attention paid to racialized experiences presented in the two texts examined here are exceptional because in most literature on transitional solidarity activism, explicit references to race are either largely absent or the racialized differences between the activists and those they assist are glossed over. For example, one study reveals that many transnational activists believe that their faith helps them to overcome racial, class, ethnic, national, and ideological differences because they believe they share a 'collective identity,' based on progressive Christianity, with the people they are assisting (Nepstad 2002 Nepstad, S.E. 2002. "Creating transnational solidarity: The use of narrative in the US-Central America peace movement". In Globalization and resistance: transnational dimensions of social movements, Edited by: Smith, J.G. and Johnston, H. 133–149. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. [Google Scholar]). 8. See Fassin (2007 Fassin, D. 2007. Humanitarianism as a politics of life. Public culture, 19(3): 499–520. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), p. 513. 9. See Foucault (1990 Foucault, M. 1990. The history of sexuality: an introduction, New York: Vintage Books. [Google Scholar]). 10. For more on the distinction between the politics of life and biopolitics, see Didier Fassin's 'La biopolitique n'est pas une politique de la vie' ('Biopolitics is not a politics of life') (2006, pp. 35–48). 11. The fact that the CPT has consistently declared that its members are aware of the risks of working in war-torn nations, but that they believe that the threat does not outweigh the potential benefit of remaining had little bearing on these reports (Shephard 2005a Shephard, M. 2005a. You're a target, father told Loney. Toronto Star, 1 December: A12 [Google Scholar], Weber 2005 Weber, T. 2005. Peace group says no to violence in hostage talks. The Globe and Mail, [online], 29 November. Available from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051129.whostag1129/BNStory/National/ [Accessed 5 December 2005] [Google Scholar], Scrivener 2006 Scrivener, L. 2006. Getting into harm's way: Critics say group should stay out of war zone, but CPT insists it belongs in Baghdad. The Toronto Star, : A.14 26 March [Google Scholar]). 12. An October 2007 report on exports specifically for military use found that between 2000 and 2006, Canada's arms exports rose 3.5 times, during which time Canada exported CDN $3.6 billion in military goods (Choudry 2008 Choudry, A., 2008. Making a killing: Military-industrial complex and impacts on the third world, Available from: http://towardfreedom.com/home/index.php?option = com_content&task = view&id = 1386&Itemid = 0 (http://towardfreedom.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1386&itemid=0) [Accessed 29 August 2008] [Google Scholar]). 13. In Ross's observation, it is noteworthy that politicians end their speeches with the obligatory divine call 'God bless America' because this religious-political form of patriotism not only leaves no room for dissent, but also conforms with the contemporary 'Christian crusade' that shapes much of the foreign policies of the West (p. 240). 14. Puar employs Lisa Duggan's (2002 Duggan, L., Castronovo, R. and Nelson, D.D. 2002. "The new homonormativity: the sexual politics of neoliberalism". In Materializing democracy: toward a revitalized cultural politics, 175–194. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) notion of homonormativity, which refers to a 'new neo-liberal sexual politics' that hinges on 'the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption' (cited Puar, p. 68). 15. A complete list of these groups is appended in the recent CPT publication titled 118 days (Brown 2008 Brown, T.G., ed. 2008. 118 days: Christian Peacemaker Teams held hostage in Iraq, Toronto: Christian Peacemaker Teams. [Google Scholar]). 16. Designed as a 'Freedom caravan', this week-long protest campaign was organized to end in Ottawa with a vigil coinciding with the Supreme Court of Canada hearings on the constitutionality of the security certificates and indefinite detention (Behrens 2006 Behrens, M., 2006. Reflections from the Freedom Caravan and Camp Hope. Available from: http://www.homesnotbombs.ca/caravandiary.htm [Accessed 18 June 2009] [Google Scholar], 2008 Behrens, M. 2008. "A great hand of solidarity: Jim Loney and Canada's secret trial detainees". In 118 days: Christian Peacemaker Teams held hostage in Iraq, Edited by: Brown, T.G. 162–170. Toronto: Christian Peacemaker Teams. [Google Scholar]). Other interviews that Loney gave that week included an appearance on Canada A.M. on 7 June (CTV.ca 2006b CTV.ca, 2006b. Loney feels terror suspects being unfairly judged. 7 June. Available from: http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20060607/loney_intvu_060607?hub = TorontoHome (http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/ctvnews/20060607/loney_intvu_060607?hub=torontohome) [Accessed 2 November 2006] [Google Scholar]), and on the CBC Sunday Report, on 11 June. 17. It is important to note that very early on in the kidnapping, in December 2005, the CPT had made the decision to use the publicity they were receiving to try to spotlight the plight of Iraqis held in detention. However, the press almost completely ignored this emphasis in the interviews and press releases that the CPT had issued (Nafziger and Barrow 2008 Nafziger, T. and Barrow, S. 2008. "Writing peace out of the script". In 118 days: Christian Peacemaker Teams held hostage in Iraq, Edited by: Brown, T.G. 135–152. Toronto: Christian Peacemaker Teams. [Google Scholar], p. 140

Racialization · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Sex work and related issues

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub