Sunday, April 22, 2007
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan has been shot by Israeli troops during a protest on the West Bank, according to peace activists.
The Nobel laureate from Belfast was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet when a protest exploded into violence last Friday near Ramallah on the West Bank, said fellow protesters.
The veteran peace campaigner had been in the Palestinian village of Bil'in last week to speak at an international conference.
For the past two years the village has been the scene of weekly protests against security fences erected by Israel.
Speaking after the incident on Friday, Mrs Corrigan who was later treated in hospital, said she wanted to say that "this separation wall, contrary to what the Israelis say, will not prevent attacks and violence.
"What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I am sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, want peace."
Campaigners said that 24 demonstrators, including Corrigan, were hurt when Israeli troops blocked the protest march last Friday afternoon.
One campaigner, from the International Women's Peace Service, who took part in the protest told how troops fired between 30 and 50 canisters of tear gas into the crowd before opening fire with rubber bullets.
Speaking from Haris, she told Sunday Life: "Mairead was able to walk after being hit by the rubber bullet, but she was clearly suffering badly from the effects of tear gas.
"(The disturbance happened) when soldiers prevented people getting to the wall. The soldiers then started throwing gas canisters into the crowd."
Corrigan shared the Noble Peace Prize in 1976 for her work with the Peace People.
Photo: ISM Martinez
Mairead Corrigan
Curriculum Vitae
Co-founder of Community of Peace People with Mr. Ciaran McKeown and Mrs Betty Williams - Founded 14/8/76
Name: Mairead Corrigan (Miss)
Age: 27 January 1944
Place of Birth: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Parents: Father - Window Cleaning Contractor
Mother - Housewife - (Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Corrigan)
Family: 5 Sisters and 2 Brothers
Education: St. Vincent's Primary School, Falls Road, Belfast
Miss Gordons Commercial College for 1 year
Employment: From the age of 16 worked in various positions as shorthand typist. When Movement started was employed as Confidential Secretary to the Managing Director of Arthur Guinness & Co.
Hobbies: Swimming
Interests: Worked with Catholic Organisations as voluntary worker. Helped establish clubs for many physically handicapped children, teenagers, preschool play groups etc.
Visited internees of Long Kesh Prison internees.
Recognitions Received: Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for courage from Berlin section of International League of Human Rights.
Hon. Doctor of Law from Yale University, U.S.A.
Norwegian People Peace Prize, 1976
Nobel Peace Prize Winner - 1976
From Les Prix Nobel en 1976, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1977
In September 1981 Mairead married Jackie Maguire, widower of her sister Anne, who never recovered from the tragic loss of her children and died in January 1980. Mairead is step-mother of Mark, Joanne, and Marie Louise, and mother of John Francis (b. 1982) and Luke (b. 1984).
She has continued her work with the Community of Peace People, advocating a nonviolent resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict in speaking engagements and writings. Among other projects, the Peace People organise summer camps in other European countries to provide a setting in which young Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland can come to know one another. The Peace People also have continued the outreach to prisoners and their families.
Mairead was a co-founder of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a non-sectarian organisation of Northern Ireland which defends human rights and advocates repeal of the government’s emergency laws.
In pursuit of her mission to promote the establishment of peace and justice by nonviolent means, Mairead has travelled to more than twenty-five countries throughout the world. These have included the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Israel, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia. She visited Latin America as the guest of Nobel laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, whom she had nominated for the prize. In 1993 she travelled to Thailand with six other Nobel peace laureates in a vain effort to enter Myanmar (Burma) to protest the detention of laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In the course of her work she has met with such world leaders as Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth II, and President Jimmy Carter.
She has received honorary doctorates from U.S. institutions: the College of New Rochelle, St. Michael’s College in Vermont, and others. In 1978 she was honoured by the United Nations program for Women of Achievement. In 1990 she gave the Ava Helen Pauling lecture at Oregon State University, was a guest speaker at the Third International Conference on Human Rights in Helsinki, and received the 1990 “Pacem in Terris” Peace and Freedom Award in Davenport, Iowa. In 1992 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation of Santa Barbara, California, granted her its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.
The conference at which she spoke was an international conference for non-violent resistance held in Bil'in. The following were also scheduled speakers (I doubt if Azmi Bishara attended considering the current circumstance he is in)
WHEN: 18 – 20 APRIL, 2007 with a major non-violent action on the final day
WHERE: BIL'IN VILLAGE near Ramallah, Palestine
SPEAKERS:
- Dr. Azmi Bishara, Palestinian Israeli Knesset member
- Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Irish Nobel Peace Prize recipient
- Dr. Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- Luisa Morgantini, Italian EU Parliament member and Peace Activist
- Stéphane Hessel, former French Ambassador
- Jean-Claude Lefort, French parliament member
- Amira Haas, author and journalist, Ha'aretz
- Sam Bahour, Palestinian activist and entrepreneur
- Representatives of the Bil'in Popular Committee