Prayer urged for 21 Christian aid workers held hostage
Pastor Dale Morgan
Prayer urged for 21 Christian aid workers held hostage*
Posted on Aug 4, 2007 | by Staff
WASHINGTON (BP)--With two South Korean men having been executed, 21
young Koreans remained hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan at the
two-week point Aug. 2 following the Christian aid workers' kidnapping
July 19.
Two women hostages are critically ill and most of the others are sick,
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Aug. 3, but it did not provide
details.
In Washington, an official with the Institute on Religion and Democracy
sounded a call Aug. 3 for the media and for Christians to speak up for
the Korean captives.
"Why is it that the media finds the brief incarceration of Paris Hilton
worthy of 'round-the-clock vigils but spares little ink and little air
time to tell the world more about these two men who gave their lives
while serving the people of Afghanistan?" Faith McDonnell, IRD director
of religious liberty programs, asked.
"Even more disturbing than lack of media coverage, though, is the tepid
response of the churches to the plight of their brothers and sisters
from South Korea," McDonnell continued in the statement.
"No matter what issues currently occupy Christians in the U.S., they
should shift their focus to Afghanistan right now and join the churches
in South Korea in vigilant prayer for the remaining hostages." McDonnell
said the crisis is a chance "to witness to the world that the body of
Christ is one worldwide body."
"Christians in the West should always be praying for their persecuted
brothers and sisters -- but particularly in this time of crisis, they
should look beyond their own interests and pray for the hostages. I
challenge Christians to pray daily for the South Koreans, and to include
them as a prayer item on church Web sites, e-mail conferences and the
blog sites of individuals."
The two men who have been killed by the Taliban thus far are:
-- Bae Hyung Kyu, 42, a minister with the Sammul Presbyterian Church
near Seoul who was slain by 10 AK-47 shots July 25, his birthday. Bae
worked with unmarried university graduates, helping prepare them for
volunteer trips for aid work in developing countries, according to
Compass, a persecution watchdog organization based in Santa Ana, Calif.
Bae leaves behind a wife and 9-year-old daughter, Compass reported.
(Some news reports have spelled the name of the church "Saemmul.")
-- Shim Sung Min, 29, who had left a job in information technology to
seek a graduate degree in agriculture out of a concern for poor Korean
farmers impacted by globalization, a church member told Compass. Shim
had been teaching Sunday School classes for the handicapped, the church
member also said.
While the South Korean volunteer team, 16 of whom are women, have been
criticized in some quarters for venturing into Afghanistan's volatility,
an Afghan convert to Christianity told Compass he admires the commitment
they evidenced and hopes that a Christian presence can continue in the
country.
"During the Taliban regime, the main expatriate group in Afghanistan was
Christians," the Afghan told Compass. "They were here to help
Afghanistan. … No one else had the guts to come and help this war-torn
country."
The convert said Christians are called to serve -– and sometimes at a
very high cost.
"Thank you for coming to Afghanistan to serve my people," Compass quoted
the Afghan as saying to the hostages and other Korean Christians who had
served in Afghanistan. "Thank you for letting the world know, 'Don't
forget Afghanistan.' Your Afghan brothers in faith are praying for you
daily."
The corpses of Bae and Shim have been returned to South Korea, Compass
reported.
Taliban spokesmen threatened more executions by midnight Aug. 2 if the
Afghan government continued to refuse demands to Taliban prisoners,
Compass reported, noting that Taliban leaders later stated that no one
had been hurt.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, told the Yonhap News
Agency July 31, "If the negotiations do not go well, [the militants]
will kill the male hostages, and then it will be the female hostages' turn."
Yonhap, in an Aug. 3 report, cited informed sources in reporting that
South Korean officials are negotiating with the Taliban "for the venue
for face-to-face talks" on the fate of 21 surviving hostages, "amid
conflicting reports on imminent military operations to rescue the hostages."
South Korean officials would not officially confirm efforts to establish
direct talks with the kidnappers, Yonhap reported, but said they are
trying to maintain "direct or indirect contact" with the captors.
Negotiations for medical treatment for the sick hostages at a Kabul
hospital also have not yet been successful, Yonhap reported.
"The hospital proposed to the Taliban specific conditions for the
treatment of the Korean patients, but the militants refused them," a
reporter with the Afghan Islamic Press told Yonhap on condition of
anonymity.
Cheon Ho-seon, a spokesman for South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, said
a medical team from the South Korean military contingent stationed in
Afghanistan is on standby near the southern Afghan province of Ghazni,
where the Koreans were taken hostage. "The team has been on standby
since the kidnapping took place," he said.
The 23-member Korean aid team was traveling on a charter bus from
Kandahar to the capital, Kabul, when armed men stopped them July 19 in
the Ghazni province's Qarabagh district. The volunteers had arrived in
Afghanistan on July 13 and were scheduled to return home July 23.
Compass, in a July 30 news report, recounted that the team had spent
three days assisting three Korean women who were engaged in long-term
aid work in northern Afghanistan. The volunteers were traveling back to
Kabul but went on to Kandahar by bus when no flights were available. The
group had planned to spend several days volunteering at a hospital and
kindergarten in Kandahar where a husband-and-wife doctor team and a
single Korean woman teacher are working. The two doctors treat up to 150
patients a day, Compass quoted a member of the Korean church as saying.
An analyst for the Washington-based International Christian Concern
persecution watchdog likened the incident to the 2001 kidnapping of
American missionaries Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, who were held by
the Taliban for three months. "It was in the very same area of
Afghanistan that these two kidnappings happened," Jeremy Sewell said in
a July 20 news release. "While Mercer and Curry's story ended happily,
it was only because anti-Taliban forces attacked the prison.
"Under the Taliban, it is absolutely illegal to preach Christianity.
This courageous South Korean missions team is going to experience the
ultimate test of their faith."