Bodynsoul's List: Christain Persecution 2004~present

• On 14 April Shia clerics made it clear that they wanted Iraq to become an Islamic state governed according to Shari’ah.
• Shia hostility to the presence of US and British troops is increasingly evident as many took to the streets of Nassiriya to demonstrate on 15 April, while the main Shia opposition group boycotted talks with the US and Britain
• n a Friday sermon on 2 May, in the town of Kufa, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Sadr specifically called for the Shari’ah to be imposed,
• Such anti-western feeling could still lead to Iraqi Christians being associated with the ‘invading’ armies, leading to attacks on Christians.
• There is a danger that we Christians may have to choose between remaining in Iraq as second-class citizens deprived of our rights, or leaving this land of our fathers.
• The more moderate Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organisation sponsored by the US and made up of Iraq’s major opposition groups, has already discussed draft constitutions, some of which describe "Shari’ah as the source of tomorrow’s legal norms" in Iraq.
• This is especially because, according to Secretary Colin Powell, the US would see no objection to "an Islamic form of government that has as its basis the faith of Islam" and is democratic.
• Despite widespread fears, there have been no reported attacks on Christians by Muslims as a result of the war, either in Iraq or other countries in the Islamic world. This is probably partly due to the well publicised anti-war stance taken by many western Christian leaders.

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• Each year on August 7, we commemorate the martyrdom of   the countless millions of Assyrians who perished under   the sword of the Persian rulers, Roman emperors, Moslem   leaders and fanatics.
• As soon as the Assyrians are granted certain rights equal   or greater than those of their Moslem neighbors, the Moslem   masses revolt against them, arrest and kill their leaders,   burn their churches, rape their women, and raze their   villages.

• Iraq is home to some of the world's oldest religious communities, including Assyrians, an early, now independent Christian sect; Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who recognize papal authority; and the Mandaeans, who follow John the Baptist.
• Yet, attacks on Iraq's tiny Christian minority have been steadily increasing since late spring, culminating in the bombing of five Christian churches in Baghdad and Mosul on Sunday.
• Christians are now fleeing the country in record numbers.
• Ajmal Khybari, an official at the refugee agency's Damascus office, said about 4,000 Iraqi families had registered as refugees in Syria. Although they represent less than 5 percent of Iraq's population, Iraqi Christians now make up about 20 percent of the total refugee flow into Syria from Iraq,
• a Catholic charity in Damascus that provides food, medicine and other aid to new refugees, said last year's wartime influx of Iraqi refugees included Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians and Kurds in percentages roughly proportionate to their numbers in Iraq. "But nowadays, 95 percent of the people coming to us are Iraqi Christians," Ms. Zekert said.
• hough Iraqi Christians are heading to Jordan and Lebanon as well, Mr. Khybari said, Syria is the preferred destination, for its low cost of living, cultural similarities with Iraq and policy of freely issuing visas to citizens of other Arab countries. "For people of a very depleted economic status, Syria is an easier choice," he said.
• most of Syria's newest Iraqi Christian refugees say the decision to leave their homeland was anything but easy. They tell of Christian shopkeepers killed by Islamist gangs for daring to sell alcohol, of family businesses sold to ransom stolen children.
• Solaka Enweya, 56, an Assyrian Christian who arrived in Syria with his three sons on June 27, explained that attacks on Christians had become common since Saddam Hussein's government was toppled, in part because of the perception that Iraqi Christians are aiding the Americans.
• But like other refugees here, he said attacks on Iraqi Christians increased this spring.
• "When we heard that the Americans were going to liberate Iraq, we were so happy," Mr. Enweya said. "Yet our suffering has only increased."
• He said his family had been receiving vague death threats since the start of the war, in March 2003. But beginning in April, he said, a local Islamist group began directly threatening his sons because of their faith. Then they blew up his van. Mr. Enweya had run a small delivery service, and with the loss of the van, his whole livelihood disappeared.

• Suhair Mikhail, 33, recalls walking home from her church in Baghdad this spring with a friend, a young woman from her choir.

  "A car stopped, and three men got out," she said. "They began tearing my friend's clothes. They said, 'Because this is the first time we see you unveiled, we will only strip you. The next time, we will kill you.' "
• leaders of Iraq's Christians are urging their members to remain in Iraq or, if they have already left, to return.
• "Iraq is in a new stage of its history," Mr. Khoshaba said. "We have free speech, and places in the national assembly. Chaldeans and Assyrians are some of Iraq's most ancient people. It will be terrible if they leave before we can taste the fruits of Iraq's democracy."

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• Written threats, kidnappings, bombings and murder by Muslim extremists are driving thousands of Iraq's minority Christian population out of their ancestral homeland
• A string of church bombings in August and September caused 30,000-40,000 Christians to flee the country, Compass Direct said, according to estimates by Iraqi government and church officials.
• Of the 4,000 Iraqi families officially registered as refugees with the agency in Damascus, more than half are Christians
• Syrian authorities estimate there are about 300,000 Iraqis in the country.
• Although Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has condemned the assaults on churches as "hideous crimes," Muslim leaders have largely refused to criticize the killings of Christians who work for the U.S. military or sell liquor, according to Compass Direct. Beauty salons and shops selling music cassettes run by Christians have also been targeted because they are deemed offensive to strict Islamic practices.
• The number of Christians in Iraq is expected to drop as long as hostilities continue in the country, in line with their already steady decline over the past 15 years, Compass Direct reported. Before the 2003 war, Christians represented one million out of Iraq's 25 million inhabitants, while a 1987 census recorded their number as 1.4 million.
• A Syrian Orthodox bishop, preferring not to be named, said he feared Iraq's Christian population could totally disappear within a decade if emigration continues at its current rate.
• Without a strong Christian presence in Iraq or candidates in the upcoming elections who insist on a separation between religion and the state, the country could move precariously toward becoming a theocracy dominated by Islamic parties
• Iraqi Christians said they do not want to leave their country, but without the needed recognition and support of their rights, staying there is becoming a more difficult proposition.

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• Churches have been bombed, priests kidnapped and Christian neighbourhoods subjected to random shootings, the terrorists' revenge for the community's shared religion with the "Christian" invaders.
• According to Church leaders, some 300,000 Christians - roughly a quarter of the population - have fled their homes since the US-led invasion.
• "It's genocide. You can see it with your own eyes," said Bishop Putres Harbori, head of the Christian community in Dohuk, near the Turkish border, where 350 families have found sanctuary.
• "I have a large house and two cars," said Mr Sliwa, formerly a well paid government official. "We never had any trouble." But the Christian community in Mosul has been shaken by a wave of vicious attacks, including five car bombs detonated outside churches, killing more than 20, in one month.
• Regular gun attacks began in Christian areas of the city, with several priests kidnapped and told that, as Christians, they were on the side of the American invaders.
• Then a neighbour told him that his two sons had been killed by the latest attack. "My son's car was 300 metres away. They were slumped in their seats, covered in blood," he said. "The terrorists had shot at any car in the neighbourhood, knowing they would kill Christians."
• Mr Sliwa and the rest of his family fled to Angkawr, one of a number of Christian communities in the Kurdish-protected north. That evening his house in Mosul was broken into and ransacked.
• They say a new breed of al-Qa'eda-inspired terrorists, rather than the former Ba'athists, are behind the attacks. Iraqi police are powerless to protect the community, say families, and US forces rarely intervene, not wanting to be seen to be siding with Christians and thereby exposing the troops to more violence.
• For their part, Christian leaders in Iraq oscillate between calling the attacks "ethnic cleansing" and stressing that Christians are suffering along with others in Iraq.

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• Sabbah Zaker had a small, sturdy construction company in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and although he did not agree with the U.S. invasion, he accepted a $10,000 contract last summer to renovate schools and health clinics across his ethnically mixed home town. A few months later, his name began appearing on the walls of his neighborhood as a warning from insurgents not to cooperate with the Americans.
• Zaker, a Christian, had been agonizing over whether to leave Iraq since August, when a series of church bombings shook Mosul and Baghdad. The graffiti made the decision for him, and last September he sent one of his four sons to this city in northern Syria to find a place for the family to settle.
• Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion,
• The first trickle of wealthy Iraqis, who U.S. officials say may now be helping finance the insurgency, has been followed by a larger wave of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians -- groups targeted by the daily violence.
• U.N. officials say many are doctors, professors, business owners and recent college graduates, the intellectual core that officials in Washington hoped would rebuild Iraq.
• Hoping to help the fleeing Iraqis without encouraging their flight, the U.N. agency arranged "temporary protection status" that prevented the Iraqis from being deported but did not trigger the financial aid and relocation assistance that goes to official refugees.

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• In the past two years, Syria has taken in as many as 20,000 Christians fleeing violence and persecution in their native land.

• Christians in Iraq paid twice after coalition forces entered," says Guryal, until recently an executive of the Middle East Council of Churches in the northern city of Mosul.

   

  "First, the Iraqi Muslims accused the Christians of supporting the coalition because we are Christians like the American soldiers. This is why they insult us, because we are "unbelievers.' And we pay the second time because the American forces consider us all Arabs, not Christians."
• Christians from Iraq have gone to other countries, but most choose Syria because of cultural similarities and ease of entry.
• Unique in the region, Syria allows any citizen of an Arab nation to enter for up to six months without a visa.
• it also makes it possible for Christians to flee the dangers that have swept their country since the United States occupied it.

• From the time of independence in 1946, Syria has always opened its doors for every refugee who comes - Armenians, Palestinians, Sudanese and now Iraqis," says Archbishop Isidore Battikha, patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church in Damascus.

   

  "They are all welcome in Syria, and the government asks us to help them - we open our churches, our meeting rooms, our schools, and help by money or finding money."
• Christians also feel more comfortable in Syria than in Iraq's other neighbors, the overwhelmingly Muslim countries of Jordan, Iran, Turkey, Kuwait and especially Saudi Arabia. There, "religious freedom does not exist,"
• By contrast, about 10 percent of Syria's 18-million people are Christians, who worship freely in an atmosphere rich in history and tolerance.
• "Christians and Muslims have lived in this country for 1,500 years," says Father Toufic Eid. "Relations are very good in that people are used to living together."
• "Iraq is dangerous for Christians," says Abdel, who did not want his last name used because he fears for his relatives there. "Here, there is security and freedom."
• Christians also benefit from the fact that Syria's most recent leaders, members of the minority Alawite sect, have embraced other minorities as a way of strengthening their power.
• Once unthinkable events became routine. A bishop in Mosul was held two days before his church paid a $40,000 ransom. A Christian woman had to disguise herself in black cloak and veil so she could safely flee the country after kidnappers killed her husband.
• Iraq is not the only area of the Middle East where the Christian population is dwindling. Thousands left Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, during years of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Tens of thousands more fled Lebanon during its 15-year civil war.

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• On April 1 — Palm Sunday — after bullets were fired into the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, Iraq
• while bullets smashed our church windows, we offered our suffering as a sign of love for Christ."
• The attacks continued. Father Ragheed wrote again: "Each day we wait for the decisive attack, but we will not stop celebrating mass; we will do it underground, where we are safer.
• As the bombings in Mosul and Baghdad rose during April and May, and priests were kidnapped, Father Ragheed grew weary. In his last e-mail, May 28, he wrote, "We are on the verge of collapse."
• A day before, Pentecost Sunday, a bomb exploded in his church,
• In a sectarian and confessional Iraq, will there be any space for Christians? We have no support, no group who fights for our cause; we are abandoned in the midst of the disaster. Iraq has already been divided. It will never be the same. What is the future of our church?
• Following mass on Trinity Sunday, a week after Pentecost Sunday, Father Ragheed and three sub-deacons were seized, taken away and murdered.
• Their killers placed vehicles loaded with explosives around the bodies so no one would dare approach them.

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• Syria has taken in the lion's share of Iraq's refugees, about 1.5m of them, of whom well over half are probably Sunni, some 15% Shia and maybe 10% Christian.
• n a census in 1987, there were said to be 1.4m Christians in Iraq. In the 1990s, the figure shrank to 1m or so. After Saddam Hussein's demise, they began to be targeted, mainly by Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda, so most have now fled. An Anglican churchman says that some 1.25m Iraqi Christians now live outside Iraq, with about 250,000 left behind.
• The UNHCR has managed to register only 135,000 refugees, a fraction of those who have arrived.

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• Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped after leading prayers at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul on 29 February.
• According to the SIR Catholic news agency, the kidnappers told Iraqi church officials on Wednesday that Archbishop Rahho was very ill and, later on the same day, that he was dead.
• Iraqi police say the condition of the archbishop's body suggests that he may have died at least a week ago
• Three people who were with him at the time, a driver and two guards, were killed by the gunmen.
• The Chaldeans are the largest sect within Iraq's Christian community, which was estimated at 800,000 before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

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• The body of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop who was kidnapped in the northern city of Mosul last month as he drove home after afternoon Mass was discovered Thursday buried in a southeastern area of the city.
• The cause of death was not clear. An official of the morgue in Mosul said the archbishop, who was 65 and had health problems, including high blood pressure and diabetes, might have died of natural causes.
• Church officials said Thursday, however, that Archbishop Rahho was shot in the leg when he was abducted on Feb. 29. Gunmen sprayed his car with bullets, killed two bodyguards and shoved the archbishop into the trunk of a car,
• he managed to pull out his cellphone and call the church, telling officials not to pay a ransom for his release, they said.
• n the last few years, Mosul has been a difficult place for Christians.
• Last June, a priest and three companions were shot and killed in the archbishop’s church.
• January 2005, Archbishop George Yasilious, of another church in Mosul, was kidnapped a
• In October 2006, an Orthodox priest, Boulos Iskander, was beheaded after he was kidnapped and attempts to ransom him failed.
• The number of Chaldeans in Iraq has dropped by at least a million since the end of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship,
• Priests have estimated that fewer than 500,000 remain in Iraq.

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• "Although I had been threatened many times in Iraq, I did not want to leave," says the Armenian Orthodox hairdresser Cayran. "But then my shop was burnt and the car of my husband, who used to work as a driver, was robbed. So we left everything behind and fled to Syria."
• At an April meeting of Iraqi Christian refugees and church representatives from around the world at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East in Damascus, Iraqi Christians who are now refugees in Syria spoke as church members from the U.S., Germany, Lebanon, Pakistan and Sweden, along with the general secretaries of the World Council of Churches and Middle East Council of Churches listened.
• What the church representatives heard were stories of incredible suffering in Iraq and overflowing hospitality in Syria. They heard about the pain of living in Iraq and eventually leaving. They heard of the strain the influx of 1.5 million Iraqi refugees have placed on the economy of Syria creating the need for jobs, safety and security despite the unanswered questions of what next for the Iraqis.
• "Animals live better lives than human beings in Iraq," said Samira, a Syrian Orthodox refugee. "At least they have the freedom to move. We were even too afraid to go to church because people were kidnapped from church."
• One day, when she was still living in Iraq, Samira went shopping with her daughter. "Three gunmen stopped us. They pushed my daughter around and asked her why she was in the street without a veil. Since then, she did not want to leave home and she dropped out of university."
• Aram, who had been a member of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Baghdad, said: "My wife and I knew some Christians who were killed. As our numbers were on their mobile phones, their murderers used them to call and threaten us."
• Aram also told about the mistrust that is poisoning communities in Iraq: "We had some friends, who turned out to work for the Mahdi Army. We thought they were friends, but they took our pictures in order to have us killed."
• "My family was threatened: either you leave within 15 minutes or we will kill you," Munir described his own experience. He added that they did not know how serious the threat was, so they went to his sister's apartment next door and waited. Really an armed gang arrived. "They raped our wives, and even my eighty-year-old mother was beaten." After Munir's brother-in-law, who had been kidnapped, was freed, the family left "immediately, without even taking any clothes with us," selling the apartment for a fourth of its value.
• While the refugees are grateful to Syria and the churches there for welcoming them, many feel let down by the international community.
• Many Christian refugees experienced that in Iraq belonging to a religious minority is dangerous. "Christians and other minorities are paying the price of the Iraq war," said Samer Laham, "because they are suspected of being traitors and of helping the allied forces - as if they were not an original part of the social fabric and had not shared the bread with their Muslim brothers since centuries. "

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• A

  t least 6,000 Christians have fled the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in the past week because of killings and death threats,
• Iraqi officials have said the families were frightened by a series of killings and threats by Muslim extremists ordering them to convert to Islam or face death.
• Fourteen Christians have been slain in the past two weeks in the city,
• The attacks may have been prompted by Christian demonstrations ahead of provincial elections, which are to be held by January 31, authorities said.
• Hundreds of Christians took to the streets in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns, demanding adequate representation on provincial councils, whose members will be chosen in the local elections.

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• Thousands of Christians have left Mosul over the past fortnight. Most have found shelter in villages elsewhere in Ninawa province, but about 400 have crossed into Syria. It is still not clear who is behind the intimidation.
• "Many Christians from Mosul have been systematically targeted recently and are no longer safe there.
• said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR's representative in Syria. "We are grateful that Syria continues to welcome refugees," he added of a country that is hosting at least 1.2 million Iraqi refugees.
• Those interviewed have told similar stories of sudden flight from Mosul. Many left with limited financial resources and need help extending their visas to Syria.
• Sara* and her mother left Mosul early last week, two days after someone called one of her colleagues at work and said that all Christians should leave the city immediately or be killed. "My colleagues wept as all the Christians in the office rushed out of the building," she recalled.
• Sara was unnerved, but decided to leave only after hearing reports that 11 friends had been killed at a checkpoint by militiamen dressed as police officers. "We heard that they were killed on the spot after their identity cards were examined showing the Christian faith of the person," she explained.
• Nina*, a nurse by profession, fled Mosul almost two weeks ago. "The threats started months ago, with phone calls, letters and even messages on our door," she said, adding that she tried to ignore them at first.
• But when churches closed and friends and acquaintances began falling victim to the violence, including a friend shot dead in front of his son, Nina began reconsidering her position. It was difficult because she had an invalid mother.
• Nina hung on in Mosul until October 10, when she received a new threat. She immediately took her mother to a village outside Mosul and then carried on across the border into Syria with her sister's young family.
• Mariam* hung on even longer in Mosul and only left with her son Farah* after a wheelchair-bound Christian man was murdered.

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• The full scale of the persecution of Christians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul became apparent last night when the UN's refugee agency said about 13,000 had been hounded from their homes this month - more than half of the city's Christian community.
• Christian neighbourhoods had been bombarded with threatening phone calls, letters and messages pinned to doors for months, but the killing began a few weeks ago, he said.

• suspicion has fallen on Sunni extremists intent on turning the historic city into a stronghold.

  Local Sunni officials deny the allegation, pointing the finger at Kurdish militias who, it is said, want to empty the city of Christians before upcoming local elections. The Kurdish regional government also denies the claims.
• After a period of relative calm roadside bombs and assassinations gradually returned to Mosul, giving it the reputation as the Iraq's most dangerous city.
• the upsurge of violence has prompted a mass exodus, with 20% of the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria thought to be Christians.

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• Camping with her two youngest children in a room at one of the churches in Tellkeyf, Ikhlas Matti bursts into tears when she tries to describe what has happened to her family. 

  "My children are scattered all around," she says. 

  "I haven't seen my older daughters for two months. I had to leave one of my sons with an aunt. My sister Nadia is somewhere abroad, and I haven't seen her for 15 years." 

  Ikhlas is one of an estimated 12,000 Iraqi Christians who fled the northern city of Mosul earlier this month following a wave of murders and threats targeting their community. 
• While some of the fearful Mosul families fled across the border to Syria or Turkey, most took refuge in the Christian hinterland on the plain of Nineveh,
• Kurdish groups may have been involved in the campaign to frighten the Christians out of Mosul and into the hinterland, for reasons obscurely connected with the provincial elections due to be held at the end of January.
• The other most-named suspects were Sunni fundamentalists in the mould of al-Qaeda,

• investigations suggested elements of the security forces on the ground - the 8th Brigade of the Iraqi Army's 2nd Division - were involved. 

  The brigade is said to be largely Kurdish in composition
• It was the most concerted campaign so far against the Christians,

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• Father Fatouhi, a charismatic 27-year-old priest, was thrust into the effective leadership of the Chaldean Church in Mosul after the kidnapping and death this year of its leader, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. Archbishop Rahho’s closest aide, another senior figure in the church, was killed in 2007.
• There is ample evidence to suggest that many of the kidnappings and killings of Christians were carried out by Sunni militant groups and that ransom money has gone to finance the insurgency.
• But there is increased talk among Christians and the central government in Baghdad that the violence may be the work of Kurds who want to push Christians in Nineveh to ask to have their historic lands absorbed into the relative safety of Kurdistan.
• During the depths of the crisis in October, they were not only providing moral and spiritual support, but often venturing out at great risk to buy food and provisions for families who were too scared to even go to the market.

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