January 6, 2003
Shootings, IMB policy leave future of Jibla hospital unclear
___By Mark Wingfield
___& Greg Warner
___RICHMOND, Va.--The murder of three mission workers at Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen occurred just hours before hospital administrators were to greet government officials to discuss handing over the hospital to a Muslim-run charity.
___Government officials reportedly were to tour the hospital facility at 10 a.m. Dec. 30. That visit was cancelled, however, after three mission workers were shot dead by a lone gunman and a fourth missionary was seriously wounded soon after 8 a.m.
___The militant Islamic gunman, who confessed and surrendered to Yemeni officials, said he shot the American workers "to cleanse his religion and get closer to Allah."
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| Jibla Baptist Hospital (BP Photo) |
___Yemeni investigators suspect the gunman is tied to al-Qaida, but there is no known connection between the shooting and the proposed transfer of the hospital.
___Officials with
the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board have sought to transfer the hospital to other management as part of a global strategy shift called New Directions. Under this policy, which has been both praised and criticized by mission workers, the IMB has moved away from institutional-based ministries such as hospitals and schools to focus more heavily on what IMB leaders calls "church-starting movements."
___In October, IMB President Jerry Rankin called the proposed transfer to the People's Charitable Society an "answer to prayer." The Muslim-run charity was founded by Yemen's foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi.
___IMB spokesman Mark Kelly said in October that the mission board would still send medical personnel to Yemen but that those personnel would go directly to outlying areas rather than working from a centralized hospital.
___A group of Christians, led by retired medical missionary John Wikman of Fort Smith, Ark., attempted to find a way to keep the hospital in the hands of Christians, but their proposal was rejected by IMB leadership. Kelly responded at the time that Wikman's group had not proved they could raise the necessary money.
___By early December, two deadlines for the transfer to the People's Charitable Society passed with no action, hospital officials said. They informed the Yemeni government Dec. 12 that they would begin shutting down the facility, ending all surgeries by Dec. 26 and closing the hospital Dec. 31.
___In mid-December two Christian organizations agreed to take over the facility, hospital staffers said. A proposal was drafted and negotiations with the government began.
___Then on Dec. 22, the IMB informed the staff the transfer to the People's Charitable Society was going to take place after all. A meeting was scheduled with the Yemeni minister of healing and minister of planning for 10 a.m. Monday, Dec. 30, at the hospital compound.
___The meeting was cancelled after the gunman attacked at about 8:15 a.m. It is not known what effect the shooting will have on the proposed transfer.
___"My own feeling is that this is the end of Jibla hospital," said Ken Clezy, an Australian surgeon who works at the hospital.
___Many hospital employees, including some IMB mission workers, opposed the IMB's plans to transfer the hospital. Kathleen Gariety, one of the Americans killed by the gunman, was the most vocal advocate for keeping the hospital in the hands of Christians, colleagues said.
___"She pleaded with people to try to save the hospital," Wikman said in an interview after the shooting. "When she said the local Yemeni people wanted the hospital to stay, she knew what she was talking about because the nationals really confided in her ... . She worked with a lot of the nationals in her job. She had the pulse of the folks, even more than the doctors did."
___Jibla Baptist Hospital, founded by Southern Baptist mission workers 35 years ago, is the only full-service hospital in the poor, rural area around Jibla. It is staffed by 180 local workers, 13 Southern Baptist mission personnel and about 20 other international workers.
___Although the hospital is popular among most local residents, some extremists see it as a Western intrusion and an affront to Islam.
___News reports published by the IMB and the SBC's Baptist Press in the days after the Americans' deaths largely bypassed comment on the future of the hospital.
___Rankin, in a nationally televised news conference, promised that Southern Baptists will continue ministry in Yemen and other dangerous places.
___Rankin said he anticipates the hospital will continue its work, although he did not indicate that the IMB will continue to manage it. He did, however, suggest that Southern Baptist workers will continue to serve there.
___"Obviously, the needs of the people continue, and the reason our people are there is because of those needs and our care and concern for the people," he said. "So we certainly will continue to explore how we might continue the ministry to which God has called us there.
___"We have been negotiating with another organization to take responsibility for the hospital, but we're committed to continuing whatever ministry we can in the country."
___The next day, IMB spokeswoman Anita Bowden added in an interview with Associated Baptist Press: "The transfer is still in process, but with three deaths, the discussions understandably have stopped."
___Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard; Greg Warner is executive editor of ABP
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