From Occupied Palestine

Iraq: The things that keep us here
CAOIMHE BUTTERLY
Electronic Iraq, 18 August 2003

Anwar Adel Khardom points to her heavily pregnant, shrapnel-sprayed stomach as she fluctuates between composure and frantic, inconsolable grief-"what sort of life will this child be born into?" Her thirteen year old daughter Hadil, frail arms bruised and scarred with shrapnel, head bandaged with white gauze, remains wide-eyed and observant, fanning her mother with a woven fan as the heat of an oppressive, airless day reaches it's midday climax.

She took a bullet for peace
MAIREAD CAREY
TIME Europe, 28 April 2003

TIME Heroes 2003: Caoimhe Butterly, Ireland

Dublin -- Her message is pure: Stop the killing, all of it, now. Her tactics are drawn from King and Gandhi. And her commitment is vast and deep. These days you'll find Caoimhe Butterly — a striking presence at 1.85 m, with long red hair and mournful blue eyes — outside the Irish parliament in Dublin or at any antiwar protest in Ireland. In years past you could find her working with AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, homeless in New York, Zapatistas in Mexico. Last November, you could find her in the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank. That's where a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier found her, hitting her thigh as she tried to lead a group of Palestinian children to safety. The 24-year-old Dubliner was luckier than British peace activist Ton Hurndall who, in similar circumstances this month in Gaza, was shot in the head and now lies in a coma. Seven months earlier, Butterly spent 16 days inside Yasser Arafat's besieged compound in Ramallah. She had gone in as an ambulance volunteer, to give first aid to a man who had been shot, but she refused to leave.

Courage under fire
KATIE BARLOW
Guardian, 27 November 2002

For almost a year Caoimhe Butterly has been standing in the way of Israeli tanks and troops in Jenin. Last Friday she was shot by a soldier - but she still won't leave, she tells Katie Barlow

On Friday, Ian Hook, a British UN volunteer, was shot and killed in Jenin. Caoimhe Butterly, a 23-year-old Irish activist, was also shot, but survived. In October, I spent two weeks filming Caoimhe for a documentary I am making. I had been inspired to meet her by the footage of her blocking Israel Defence Force tanks as they fired over her head, and stories of her standing in the line of fire between soldiers and Palestinian children, as the IDF threatened to "make her a hero".

I was shot while escorting Jenin's school children
CAOIMHE BUTTERLY
Counterpunch 23 November 2002

In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces made the bottom section of the camp into a closed military zone in the morning, using about twelve tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache helicopter gunships. I had been trying to get between the unarmed children and the tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist, and we were immediately arrested, along with another international volunteer, and taken to a place where about twenty Palestinian men were being held. They were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped to their trousers or underwear, and beaten severely. After I was detained for two hours and interrogated briefly, the Israeli soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the soldiers refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave, I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to the area I would be shot.