Below is an Associated Press photo taken of a poster of Jill that was hung outside city hall in Rome. It will remain there until Jill is freed. Jill has been kidnapped for a month now but hope remains, and the prayers have never stopped! Don’t forget Jill.
In the mean time, via Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing, I discovered that through their literary blogs a group of writers has organized a symbolic action and are sending books and journals filled with blank pages to Aljazeera television "in the hope that Jill might soon be able to fill [them]." With this blank book protest, participants are pressing the network to "do [its] best to convey this message to her captors: Let Jill Carroll go." Writer Abby Frucht explains further on her blog:
Hi. A few of us at readerville.com are initiating a gesture of support for Jill Carroll. We don’t harbor any illusions that by doing this we will effect her release….but we want her to know, when she is released, that she had the support of other readers and writers and that we didn’t forget her. Here’s how it goes. Send a blank journal, a blank notebook, or a small sheaf of blank papers [via Airmail ASAP] to: Al Jazeera International, P.O. Box 23127, Doha, Qatar. On the first page of the blank book, write this letter or one like it:
"To Al Jazeera News, I am one of a group of readers and writers sending you this blank book in the hope that Jill Carroll will soon be able to fill it. Please do your best to convey this message to her captors: Let Jill Carroll go, so that she might continue to write about the things that have made you so eager to claim our attention. Through Jill, and through the gesture that you will make by setting her free, we other writers, readers, and thinkers will better understand the differences, and the vast similarities, between our corners of the world."
Thanks Fayrouz,
I’m blogging about this as we speak;-)
Natasha,
Here’s more from Europe: Paris demonstration in support of Jill Carroll and two Iraqi journalists held hostage
Seeing the video of Jill Carroll really broke my heart. I don’t know her and I’ve never met her. But seeing her in such anguish really broke my heart. It is very unfair that the hostage-takers would take someone like Jill Carroll, who seemed to have incredible sympathy for the Iraqis and genuinely cared about them. May Allah protect her and minimize her suffering.
i hope she’ll return to her family and friends in good health.