CARE International statement on unconfirmed reports of the death of Clementina Cantoni
KABUL, Afghanistan (May 20, 2005) – At approximately 4:00 p.m. local time in Kabul, kidnappers claimed to have killed Clementina Cantoni. CARE International has no way of verifying this information. We are in contact with the Cantoni family, and the appropriate government authorities in Afghanistan and Italy. We continue to hope for the best.
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Clementina, 32 years old, has spent the last 10 years dedicated to humanitarian work in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Since September 2003, she has managed the “Humanitarian Assistance for the Women of Afghanistan” project, providing food assistance and income-generating activities for 10,000 widows and 50,000 children.
Until the reports can be officially confirmed or denied, we urge all parties to maintain consideration for Clementina’s safety and the sensitivity of the situation.
This undated photo provided by CARE International shows Italian humanitarian worker Clementina Cantoni, 32, who was abducted in Kabul, Afghanistan Monday, May 16, 2005 around 8:30 p.m. local time. Four armed men dragged Cantoni from her car in the center of Afghanistan’s capital on Monday in a bold kidnapping that reinforced fears that militants or criminals are copying tactics used in Iraq. (AP Photo/Courtesy CARE International)
Musee des Beaux Arts
by W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.