They slaughter us because we are not muslims

June 10, 07
Nuri Kino
www.aftonbladet.se

It is war, but we do not fight. We are not a part of the war. We do not bear arms. We do not kill. We turn the other cheek.

Not a day goes by without us receiving reports that Assyrians have been killed. I’ve spent all day calling Iraq. More are fleeing. The killing of the Mosul priest, who earlier practised in Södertälje, and his three deacons, was the final drop.

Four terrorists, fundamentalist Islamists, stood in front of the car and shot until the magazines of their machine guns were empty. Bullets filled four Assyrians' (also called Chaldeans and Syriacs) heads and upper bodies. But that was not enough. Two of the perpetrators pointed their guns towards the congregation members, while the other put out mines around the bombarded car. Nobody dared to approach the bodies. It took more than three hours for the Iraqi soldiers to disarm the mines so that the families and friends of those killed could move the bodies, which had been shot to pieces.

This is one of the thousands of occurrences in the ethnic cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq. This is a SYSTEMATIC cleansing. The Islamists want the indigenous people of Iraq to be extinguished, for three reasons; we are Assyrians and we are Christians. But mostly it is about us not being Muslims.

All journalists and politicians who do not face the truth are contributing to the slaughter of non-Muslims in Iraq. You must see what happens beyond the headlines of war and bombs, and see what this really is about.

The young people slaughtering non-Muslims are convinced that they are doing it for the sake of God, Allah, in the same way that Bush claimed he went to war for the sake of God. The Christian God. But we, the Assyrians, who have not born any weapons, and who have not fought in anyone’s name, are being slaughtered for the sake of one God or the other.

For the sake of God or the atheist faith, stop pretending that the ethnic and religious cleansing in Iraq is not taking place.

Sweden is, to a great extent, involved. Many, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Assyrians who have fled Iraq, or are refugees within the borders of the country, want to come to Södertälje, a small town outside Stockholm. Their capital in Europe.

I spent Holy Week in Amman, Jordan’s capital. I wanted to know how much of the writing in newspaper articles and reports was true. Is it really true that non-Muslims are the ones who have been affected worst by the war? Everybody, exactly EVERYBODY in my team and the people I met witnessed that it indeed is so. Our work resulted in the report “By God – Six Days in Amman”. In countries such as the USA, Germany, Holland and Belgium, the report has reached the absolutely highest political level. Several newspapers and TV stations, such as BBC in Great Britain, and The Netwerk in Holland are following up on the report. In Sweden everything is silent, except for the magazine Världen Idag (The World Today), criticized by the politically correct journalists. Everybody else is silent. Half a year ago the Assyrian National Federation in Sweden urged its members to stop paying the license fee for radio and TV. With all due right. In Sweden things work by: ”I pay taxes so that others will handle the problems”. We pay taxes too. When you bring up the slaughtering of non-Muslims in Iraq with Swedish politicians such as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt, you get unclear answers like “the war in Iraq affects everyone” and that “Sweden must act for peace in the region”. Sure, I agree, the war has affected everyone, and we must act to bring peace to the region, but we are being BUTCHERED because we, just as Carl Bildt, are non-Muslims.

This is not an anti-Muslim proclamation. On the contrary, I wish that liberal and moderate Muslims will participate in stopping the slaughter of non-Muslims in Iraq, but also in the rest of the Middle East, where we are seen as the worst type of citizens. Muslim sisters and brothers, show that you do not accept what is happening to non-Muslims in Iraq, but also in the rest of the Middle East, where we are seen as second class citizens. The municipal commissioner of Södertälje, Anders Lago, is doing everything he can to stop the flight to his municipality, but he cannot do it, and it will not be done. Iraqi refugees I talk to on a daily basis can live up to ten people in one small room. It is by far much better than risking being slaughtered.

The only way of stopping them from coming here is by establishing a protectorate, in the Nineveh Plains; where the majority of Assyrians and other non-Muslims can live and be protected by the UN and the surrounding world.

President Bush met the Pope yesterday, and one expects that he asked for protection of the Christians. Bush must take his responsibility, so should Carl Bildt, and also demand it from Bush.

Translated from Swedish by EasternStar News Agency

ESNA© EasternStar News Agency