THE ASSYRIANS: IGNORED AMONG FEARS OF AN IRAQI CIVIL WAR
By Charles Tannock

The Daily Star, Lebanon
Oct 4 2006

The world is consumed by fears that Iraq is degenerating into a civil
war between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But in this looming war of all
against all, it is Iraq’s small community of Assyrian Christians that
is at risk of annihilation.

Iraq’s Christian communities are among the world’s most ancient,
practicing their faith in Mesopotamia almost since the time of
Christ. The Assyrian Apostolic Church, for instance, traces its
foundation back to 34 AD and St. Peter. Likewise, the Assyrian Church
of the East dates to 33AD and St. Thomas. The Aramaic that many of
Iraq’s Christians still speak is the language of those apostles –
and of Christ.

When tolerated by their Muslim rulers, Assyrian Christians contributed
much to the societies in which they lived. Their scholars helped usher
in the "Golden Age" of the Arab world by translating important works
into Arabic from Greek and Syriac. But in recent times, toleration
has scarcely existed.

In the Armenian Genocide of 1914-1918, 750,000 Assyrians – roughly
two-thirds of their number at the time – were massacred by the Ottoman
Turks with the help of the Kurds.

Under the Iraqi Hashemite monarchy, the Assyrians faced persecution
for co-operating with the British during the World War I. Many fled to
the West, among them the Church’s patriarch. During Saddam Hussein’s
wars against the Kurds, hundreds of Assyrian villages were destroyed,
their inhabitants rendered homeless, and dozens of ancient churches
were bombed. The teaching of the Syriac language was prohibited
and Assyrians were forced to give their children Arabic names in an
effort to undermine their Christian identity. Those who wished to
hold government jobs had to declare Arab ethnicity.

In 1987, the Iraqi census listed 1.4 million Christians. Today, only
about 600,000 to 800,000 remain in the country, most on the Nineveh
plain. As many as 60,000, and perhaps even more, have fled since
the beginning of the insurgency that followed the United States-led
invasion in 2003. Their exodus accelerated in August 2004, after the
start of the terrorist bombing campaign against Christian churches by
Islamists who accuse them of collaboration with the allies by virtue
of their faith.

A recent UN report states that religious minorities in Iraq "have
become the regular victims of discrimination, harassment, and,
at times, persecution, with incidents ranging from intimidation to
murder." It also observed that "members of the Christian minority
appear to be particularly targeted."

Indeed, there are widespread reports of Christians fleeing the country
as a result of threats being made to their women for not adhering
to strict Islamic dress codes. Christian women are said to have had
acid thrown in their faces. Some have been killed for wearing jeans
or not wearing the veil.

This type of violence is particularly acute in the area around Mosul.

High-ranking clergy there claim that priests in Iraq can no longer
wear their clerical robes in public for fear of being attacked by
Islamists. Last January, coordinated car-bomb attacks were carried
out on six churches in Baghdad and Kirkuk; on another occasion, six
churches were simultaneously bombed in Baghdad and Mosul. Over the
past two years, 27 Assyrian churches have reportedly been attacked
for the sole reason that they were Christian places of worship.

The attacks go beyond targeting physical manifestations of the faith.

Christian-owned small businesses, particularly those selling alcohol,
have been attacked, and many shopkeepers murdered. The director of the
Iraqi Museum, Donny George, a respected Assyrian, says that he was
forced to flee Iraq to Syria in fear of his life, and that Islamic
fundamentalists obstructed all of his work that was not focused on
Islamic artefacts.

Assyrian leaders also complain of deliberate discrimination in the
January 2005 elections. In some cases, they claim, ballot boxes
did not arrive in Assyrian towns and villages, voting officials
failed to show up, or ballot boxes were stolen. They also cite
the intimidating presence of Kurdish militia and secret police near
polling stations. Recently, however, there are signs the Iraqi Kurdish
authorities are being more protective of their Christian communities.

Sadly, the plight of Iraq’s Christians is not an isolated one in the
Middle East. In Iran, the population as a whole has nearly doubled
since the 1979 revolution; but, under a hostile regime, the number
of Christians in the country has fallen from roughly 300,000 to
100,000. In 1948, Christians accounted for roughly 20 percent of
the population of what was then Palestine; since then, their numbers
have roughly halved. In Egypt, emigration among Coptic Christians is
disproportionately high; many convert to Islam under pressure, and
over the past few years violence perpetrated against the Christian
community has taken many lives.

The persecution of these ancient and unique Christian communities,
in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole, is deeply disturbing. Last
April, the European Parliament voted virtually unanimously for the
Assyrians to be allowed to establish (on the basis of section 5 of
the Iraqi Constitution) a federal region where they can be free from
outside interference to practice their own way of life. It is high
time now that the West paid more attention, and took forceful action
to secure the future of Iraq’s embattled Christians.

Charles Tannock is vice-president of the Human Rights Subcommittee
of the European Parliament and the Conservative Party’s
foreign affairs spokesman in the United Kingdom. THE DAILY STAR
publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate
().

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