Dear friends,
very sad news. Palestine solidarity activist, Kayla Mueller, who has been held captive in Syria by Daesh/ISIS since August 2013 has died. It has been reported that Kayla was killed during retaliatory strikes by Jordan last week. The airstrikes were carried out in retaliation for Daesh/ISIS brutal and barbaric murder of Jordanian pilot, Moaz al-Kasasbeh.
Anwar Tarawneh holds a photo of her husband, Moaz al-Kasabeh, the Jordanian pilot murdered by ISIS
Kayla was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement in Occupied Palestine in 2010. She worked with the ISM in Bil'in, Hebron and other villages, as well as in Occupied East Jerusalem. After her time with the ISM, Kayla also worked with African refugees at the African Refugee Development Center in Tel Aviv.
I have included below the ISM's tribute to Kayla, as well as a report on her death from the New York Times.
As the many tributes to Kayla have revealed, she was a young woman who dedicated herself the struggles for justice and human rights, standing always in solidarity with the oppressed.
In solidarity, Kim
**
9th February 2015 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied Palestine
Update 10th February 2015:
Today, 10th February, Kayla Mueller’s family confirmed she has been killed.
Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the
popular committee in the village of Bil’in where Kayla joined the
protests, told ISM: “Kayla came to Palestine to stand in solidarity with
us. She marched with us and faced the military that occupies our land
side by side with us. For this, Kayla will always live in our hearts. We
send all our support to her family and will continue, like Kayla, to
work against injustice wherever it is.”
Photo by ISM volunteer
*****
Kayla Mueller volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement from August to September of 2010.
Kayla, sitting under a poster of Ashraf Abu Rahma from Bil’in.
On 4 August 2013 Kayla, 26, originally
from Prescott, Arizona, was working with Syrian refugees when she was
kidnapped after leaving a Spanish Doctors Without Borders hospital in
Aleppo. Since that time she has been held in captivity by Da’esh (ISIS).
This information was not previously released publicly out of concerns
for her safety. On February 6th, Da’esh announced that she had been
killed by Jordanian airstrikes in Raqqa, northern Syria. The validity of
their announcement has not been confirmed.
Our hearts are with Kayla, her family,
friends, and all those who have lost liberty, lives and loved ones in
the global struggle for freedom and human rights.
With the ISM, Kayla worked with
Palestinians nonviolently resisting the confiscation and demolitions of
their homes and lands. In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Occupied
East Jerusalem, she stayed with the Al Kurd family to try and prevent
the takeover of their home by Israeli settlers.
Kayla sitting in a protest tent in Sheikh Jarrah.
Kayla accompanied Palestinian children to
school in the neighborhood of Tel Ruimeda in Al-Khalil (Hebron) where
the children face frequent attacks by the Israeli settlers and military.
She stayed with villagers in Izbat Al Tabib in a protest tent to try to
prevent the demolition of homes in the village. She joined weekly
Friday protests in Palestinian villages against the confiscation of
their lands due to Israel’s illegal annexation wall and settlements.
Kayla, standing beside two other ISM activists in Bil’in.
Kayla published writing online about her
work in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement in August
and September 2010. “How can I ignore the blessing of freedom of speech
when I know that people I deeply care for can be shot dead for it?” she
wrote.
Below are excerpts from two of Kayla’s posts.
October 29, 2010:
“I could tell a few stories about
running desperately from what you pray are rubber-coated steel bullets
launched from the gun tip of a reckless and frightened 18-year old.”
“I could tell a few stories about
sleeping in front of half demolished buildings waiting for the one night
when the bulldozers come to finish them off; fearing sleep because you
don’t know what could wake you. . . . I could tell a few stories about
walking children home from school because settlers next door are keen to
throw stones, threaten and curse at them. Seeing the honest fear in
young boys eyes when heavily armed settlers arise from the outpost; pure
fear, frozen from further steps, lip trembling.”
“The smell and taste of tear gas has
lodged itself in the pores of my throat and the skin around my nose,
mouth and eyes. It still burns when I close them. It still hangs in the
air like invisible fire burning the oxygen I breathe. When I cry tears
for this land, my eyes still sting. This land that is beautiful as the
poetry of the mystics. This land with the people who’s hearts are more
expansive than any wall that any man could ever build. Yes, the wall
will fall. The nature of impermanence is our greatest ally and soon the
rules will change, the tide will turn and just as the moon waxes and
wanes over this land so too the cycles of life here will continue. One
day the cycle will once again return to freedom.”
“Oppression greets us from all angles.
Oppression wails from the soldiers radio and floats through tear gas
clouds in the air. Oppression explodes with every sound bomb and sinks
deeper into the heart of the mother who has lost her son. But resistance
is nestled in the cracks in the wall, resistance flows from the minaret
5 times a day and resistance sits quietly in jail knowing its time will
come again. Resistance lives in the grieving mother’s wails and
resistance lives in the anger at the lies broadcasted across the globe.
Though it is sometimes hard to see and even harder sometimes to harbor,
resistance lives. Do not be fooled, resistance lives.”
On New Year’s Day of 2011, Kayla received
news that Jawaher Abu Rahma, from the village of Bil’in where Kayla had
demonstrated in solidarity with her and her family, had been killed by
tear gas asphyxiation. On the first of January 2011, Kayla wrote:
“I felt compelled to blog on this
today. The first day of 2011, the actual day that she died, just a few
hours ago in a village called, Bil’in.”
“Every Friday in Bil’in villagers and
international/Israel activists march to the barbed wire fence where an
enormous and expanding illegal settlement is visible to protest the
theft of their land and their livelihoods. The Palestinians are armed
with rocks, the other activists with cameras and collectively they are
armed with their bones. Each Friday the demonstration is met with
violence; rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and sounds bombs are the
usual choice of artillery. Lives are taken as a result of the violence
and Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s life was taken today.
I have been to this village,
I demonstrated in this village,
I demonstrated arm in arm with her brothers,
and I knew her.”
……………
“My first demonstration in Palestine
was in Bil’in and that is when I met Ashraf, Jawaher’s brother. Despite
his broken English he always made a point to make sure we were ok when
we were at the demonstration in his village, to help us cough up the
tear gas and walk off the anxiety. He showed us his village and we
played with the kids. Ashraf would bring us water or tea and help us
find rides out of the village back to the cities. In the summer of 2008,
Ashraf was participating in the demonstration and was detained by the
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). After he was blind-folded and his hands
bound, an IDF soldier shot him in the foot from a distance of about 2
meters shattering his toes and leaving him in trauma as one could
imagine.”
(As with all of these video clips, the content may be too graphic for some, please use discretion).
“Just the next year in 2009 Ashraf’s
brother, Bassem Abu Rahma, was participating in the demonstration and
was attempting to communicate with the IDF soldiers telling them to stop
shooting the steel-coated rubber bullets as an Israeli activist had
been shot in the leg and needed medical attention. Not soon after an
Israeli soldier illegally used a tear gas canister as a bullet hitting
Bassem in the chest, stopping his heart and killing him instantly.”
And now just today, the daughter
of the Rahmah family, Jawaher, has been asphyxiated from tear gas
inhalation. Jawaher was not even participating in the weekly
demonstration but was in her home approximately 500 meters away from
where the tear gas canisters were being fired (by wind the tear gas
reaches the village and even the nearby illegal settlement often). There
is currently little information as to how she suffocated but the doctor
that attended her said a mixture of the tear gas from the IDF soldiers
and phosphorus poisoned her lungs causing asphyxiation, the stopping of
the heart and death this afternoon after fighting for her life last
night in the hospital. The following is a clip from today showing
hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis and international activist carrying
her body to her families home where they said their final goodbyes.
“This family has a tragic story, but it is the story of life in Palestine.”
“Thank you for reading. Ask me questions and ask yourself questions but most importantly, question the answers.
Forever in solidarity,
Kayla”
***
***
For
one tortured weekend, the parents of Kayla Mueller refused to believe
that their daughter was dead. From their home in Prescott, Ariz., they
issued an impassioned plea to the Islamic State, which had held her
captive since August 2013, and urged the extremist organization to
contact them privately with proof of her death. The militants acquiesced
and sent at least three photographs of her corpse.
Those
photos are among the few clues about her life and death in captivity,
as is a letter that she wrote from her cell last year and that her
family made public on Tuesday.
Two
people briefed on the family’s communication with the Islamic State
said that her parents had received at least three photos. Two showed Ms.
Mueller, who was 26, in a black hijab, or Muslim head covering, that
partly obscured her face. Another showed her in a white burial shroud,
which is used in traditional Muslim funerals. The images showed bruises
on the face, but both people, who reviewed the photographs and asked not
to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter, said it remained
unclear whether her injuries were consistent with being killed in the
rubble of a flattened building, as the Islamic State reported.
Friends and family of Kayla Mueller, the
American hostage of the Islamic State who was killed in Syria, paid
tribute to her in her hometown, Prescott, Ariz.
Video by Reuters on
Publish Date February 10, 2015.
Photo by Brian Skoloff/Associated Press.
The group, also known as ISIS
or ISIL, said on Twitter last week that Ms. Mueller had died in a
building that had been demolished by Jordanian airstrikes, a claim that
both the White House and Jordan’s government said was unfounded.
Yet the images sent to her family did not completely rule out death in that manner.
One
of the two people briefed on the evidence said that Ms. Mueller’s face
did not show puffiness or other concussive effects associated with a
bomb blast, making it unlikely that she was killed when the area was
hit, as the Islamic State said. But the same person said that she could
have been in a nearby building or struck by flying debris.
American officials confirmed that the structure was bombed in coalition airstrikes last week.
The
authorities insisted that the building, a weapons storage facility, was
a legitimate target and explained that they had conducted detailed
surveillance to make sure that no hostages were seen going in or out.
But a senior American official who requested anonymity to discuss
classified information acknowledged that they had not been able to
survey the building around the clock.
“We have no definitive evidence of how, or when, she died,” he added.
Described
by friends and family members as a deeply idealistic young woman eager
to help those less fortunate, Ms. Mueller was just shy of her 25th
birthday on Aug. 4, 2013, when she disappeared in the northern Syrian
city of Aleppo.
She had arrived in Syria a day earlier with a Syrian man who has been described as her boyfriend or colleague.
Document: Kayla Mueller’s Letter to Her Family
He
had been contracted to fix the Internet connection at a Doctors Without
Borders office, and employees of the international charity were
flabbergasted when Ms. Mueller showed up with him.
Syria
was then a no-go zone for most international aid workers, said
employees of the charity, who explained that they had reluctantly housed
her overnight and agreed to drive her to a bus station for what was
supposed to be her trip back to Turkey.
Her
car was ambushed on the way, and she and her Syrian companion were
abducted. He was later freed and has declined to speak about what
happened.
Once
in the hands of the militants, Ms. Mueller was forced to wear the hijab
and was placed in a cell with female detainees, according to two former
hostages held in the same facility. She was moved a number of times,
and witnesses saw her inside a potato chip factory near Aleppo and later
at a prison set up on the grounds of a gas installation in Raqqa, the
capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate.
While
many of the male hostages were tortured, the female captives, including
three staffers of Doctors Without Borders, were treated relatively
well, according to a European hostage who met Ms. Mueller during his
monthslong captivity last year. The women were not beaten, he said, and
he said he believed that they were not sexually molested.
This
seemed to be confirmed in a letter that Ms. Mueller wrote to her family
last spring and that her parents released on Tuesday. On a piece of
lined notebook paper, she wrote in crowded, cursive script: “Everyone,
if you are receiving this letter it means I am still detained but my
cellmates ... have been released.”
“Please
know that I am in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy (put
on weight in fact); I have been treated w/utmost respect + kindness.”
She
begged her family for forgiveness: “If you could say I have ‘suffered’
at all throughout this whole experience it is only in knowing how much
suffering I have put you all through,” she wrote. “I will never ask you
to forgive me as I do not deserve forgiveness.”
In
Arizona, her extended family and friends gathered by the steps of the
Yavapai County courthouse to ponder what had driven her to such a
dangerous place. They and others described a deeply committed young
woman who refused to avert her eyes from the suffering of others.
“Kayla has touched the heart of the world,” said her aunt Lori Lyon, speaking on behalf of the family.
Her
desire to help solve world problems was already on display in high
school, where she became involved with a campaign that aimed to stop
Flagstaff, Ariz., city officials from using recycled waste water to make
snow on a set of peaks considered sacred to the Hopi people. By the
time she enrolled at Northern Arizona University in 2007, the Save the
Peaks campaign was just one of an array of causes she was engaged with,
said her former classmate Leslie Alamer, who helped set up a website honoring her friend’s legacy.
“Every
time I ran into her on campus, she was organizing something, or talking
about a new issue, or else inviting me to an event. She was so active,”
said Ms. Alamer, 28, rattling off the causes Ms. Mueller had joined,
including one that called attention to atrocities in Darfur, Sudan.
In
college, she began researching accusations of mistreatment of detainees
at the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Ms. Alamer said.
After
graduating in 2009, Ms. Mueller moved to India, and soon after to
Israel. In 2010, she volunteered with the International Solidarity
Movement in the Palestinian territories, according to Abdullah Abu Rahma, the group’s coordinator in the village of Bil’in.
He
said Ms. Mueller had joined them in using nonviolent means to protest
the Israeli occupation. She lived with families in East Jerusalem in
order to try to prevent the demolition of their homes. On her blog, she
described sleeping in front of half-destroyed homes, using her body as a
shield against the bulldozers they feared were coming.
Kathleen
Day, head of the United Christian ministry at Northern Arizona
University, remembered how Ms. Mueller used her blog as a way to
encourage her peers to get involved. She did not just write a blog post
and leave it at that: She sent it to friends and family, asking them to
forward it to others and to take action.
“It’s not that she’s so angelic,” Ms. Day said. “She saw things and did what she could, whatever she could, however she could.”
The Fates of 23 ISIS Hostages in Syria
Kayla Mueller was one of at least 23 foreign hostages
from 12 countries who were kidnapped by Syrian insurgents, sold or
handed over to the Islamic State, and held underground in a prison near
the Syrian city of Raqqa.
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