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Plea for Assyrian Christians and Iraqi minorities
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8,18, 05
As world attention focuses on the struggle to achieve a balance
of constitutional interests between Kurds, Sunnis and Shias in
Iraq, a human rights group is campaigning to draw fresh attention
to the serious plight of Assyrian Christians and other minority
groups.
In a letter to the Guardian newspaper in the UK yesterday,
Glyn Ford, Labour Euro-MP for South West England, joined former
Tribune editor Mark Seddon and Andy Darmoo, head of Save the
Assyrians, to ask why no proper attention has been given to minorities
who make up 6 per cent of the Iraqi population.
"In particular, what of the Assyrian Christians?",
they write. "Prevented from voting in the elections, in
recent months many have had their land occupied and stolen, their
churches firebombed and their families attacked. Isn't it time
that the international community began championing the rights
of Assyrians and other minorities before it is too late?"
Until the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there were estimated to
be around one million Christians in Iraq. They include the country's
original inhabitants, but are wrongly portrayed by militant Islamists
as American infiltrators.
Some recent estimates say that between 60,000 and 80,000 Chaldo-Assyrian
Christians have fled the country since the fall of Baghdad.
Church bombings in Assyrian neighbourhoods of Baghdad and
Mosul in August and October 2004, mortar attacks, raids against
Christian homes, and forced conversions have also contributed
to the unease of a community that has increasingly felt itself
under siege.
At least one militant organisation, The Islamic Mujahideen,
has in the recent past demanded that all Mandaeans (another minority
group) convert to Islam, leave the country, or be killed.
"Christian women are harassed, have acid thrown into
their faces, are kidnapped and raped," says one civil rights
activist. "They seek some safety behind the Muslim hajib."
During Saddam Hussein's wars against the Kurds, hundreds of
Assyrian villages were destroyed. Their inhabitants were rendered
homeless and scattered as refugees in large cities or in neighbouring
countries. Dozens of ancient churches, some dating to the early
centuries of Christianity, were bombed and turned into rubble.
The teaching of the Syriac language was also prohibited and
Assyrians were forced to give their children Arabic names in
a way that undermined their identity. Those who wished to hold
governmental jobs had to sign ethnicity correction papers which
declared them Arabs.
The fall of Saddam, which it was hoped would bring justice
to Iraq, has instead unleashed religious violence onto Christians
and minority communities in Iraq, in the wake of an increasingly
bloody insurgency against occupation.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent
the views of Ekklesia
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050818iraq.shtml
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