grim appeal has been made by the Int’l Committee of the Red Cross to the Abu Sayyaf Group of Al Bader Parad as a March 30 headline deadline approaches in the latest terrorist kidnapping holding us all hostage. Please pass this post on until bloggers  like Angela Stuart Santiago should receive it and have their eyes opened to the terrible things they are abetting, defending, rationalizing, even glorifying…southern Philippines as the Kidnap-for-Ransom or Beheading Capital of the World.

Manila / Geneva (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is appealing to the Abu Sayyaf Group, which is holding Mary Jean Lacaba, Eugenio Vagni and Andreas Notter in the southern Philippines, to ensure that the three remain unharmed and to let them go immediately.

The appeal is in response to threats made by the abductors that they will kill one of the ICRC employees on 30 March if their demand for a pull back of troops goes unmet.

“I am very concerned by the threats of the kidnappers,” said the ICRC’s president, Jakob Kellenberger. “I am asking for their safe, unconditional and immediate release.”

“The sole purpose of Mary Jean, Eugenio and Andreas’ work is to give help to those in need. It is impossible to understand what the kidnappers could possibly achieve by hurting them. Harming a humanitarian aid worker cannot be justified under any ideology or religious law.”

Since the abduction on 15 January, the ICRC and the Philippine National Red Cross have been working vigorously to resolve this ordeal. On 27 March, Mr Kellenberger spoke with Philippine Executive Secretary, Eduardo Ermita, the country’s second-highest ranking official, and asked him to ensure that the authorities do everything in their power to save the lives of the hostages, while avoiding any action that could put the ICRC staff at risk.

“The ICRC’s priority is that Mary Jean, Eugenio and Andreas remain safe and that they be able to return to their families, who miss them desperately. Their children, parents, siblings, spouses, friends and colleagues will not give up hope of seeing them again soon,” added Mr Kellenberger.

The threat to kill one of their three captives soon,  unless their impossible demands are met, is not an empty one.  Who can forget the six summer students beheaded by the same Al Bader Parad ASG gang in 2006, or the 2007 ambush-beheadings of 14 Marines?  We are all Abu Sayyaf, now!