IRAQ’S BELEAGUERED BELIEVERS
By Charles Tannock

Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX
Oct 8 2006

The world is consumed by fears that Iraq is degenerating into a civil
war among 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 A.D. 34 and St. Peter. Likewise, the Assyrian Church
of the East dates to A.D. 33 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 — 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 First World War. Many
fled to the West, among them the church’s patriarch.

During Saddam Hussein’s wars with 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,
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 U.N. 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," and 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 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 near Mosul. High-ranking
clergy there claim that priests in Iraq can no longer wear clerical
robes in public for fear of being attacked by Islamists.

In January, coordinated car-bomb attacks were carried out on six
churches in Baghdad and Kirkuk. On another occasion, six churches were
bombed simultaneously in Baghdad and Mosul. During the past two years,
27 Assyrian churches have reportedly been attacked because they were
Christian places of worship.

These 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 artifacts.

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 that 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 about 300,000 to 100,000.

In 1948, Christians accounted for about 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 during 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.

In 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 UK Conservative foreign affairs spokesman.

Charles Tannock wrote this essay for Project Syndicate in Prague,
Czech Republic.