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We Stand With You

November 05, 2009
by Patricia Peterson

Padraig O'Malley reads a letter of condolence to the Kirkuk Provincial Council. Click here to watch video.

In April 2009, representatives of four divided cities gathered at UMass Boston to tentatively acknowledge each other and to begin to explore the conflicts they share based on race, ethnicity, religion, politics, and more. Something happened that brought the separate sides of these separate cities together. That same something found expression in the wreaths Padraig O’Malley laid at the sites of two bombings which took place in June in Kirkuk province, which took the lives of over 100 people.

O’Malley, the John Joseph Moakley Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, also brought with him condolences from President Jack Wilson, Chancellor Keith Motley, and all those who had attended the April meeting: mayors and city officials from Kirkuk, Iraq; representatives of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities of Nicosia, Cyprus; those from Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland; and from northern Mitrovica (Serbian majority) and from southern Mitrovica (Albanian majority).

After the meeting in Boston, the group had pledged to meet annually and share experiences, but the bombings in Iraq provoked an immediate, personal expression, which O’Malley delivered during his visit in July. In the small town of Taza, where mostly Turkmen live, 150 mud homes collapsed as a result of the bombings and 74 Turkmen, women and children were killed.

Among the people O’Malley met was a man who had lost seventeen members of his family. Over a single grave which held the bodies of all 74 victims, O’Malley placed a wreath and read out a letter of condolence. In Shoura, a Sunni section of Kirkuk, a bomb killed 34 people. O’Malley also met those who had survived in the tent city set up to provide temporary shelter, and there, too, he placed a wreath and offered condolences.

“When one of you dies, all of us die a little, too,” he said. “We stand with you in resolute solidarity.”

The bonds that formed in April at the UMass conference are being strengthened. The group will reconvene in May of 2010 in Mitrovica, where the Forum for Cities in Transition from conflict will gather to look carefully at the programs, problems, and solutions of one city and offer their counsel.

Read more about Padraig O'Malley and the Moakley Chair here and also on Facebook.

Tags:  mccormack  moakley  o'malley