AINA, CA
Assyrian Int’l News Agency
Dec 23 2006
Nina Shea Testifies Before Congress on Behalf of Iraq’s Assyrians and
Other Minorities
(AINA) — The following testimony of Nina Shea, Director Center For
Religious Freedom, was delivered on December 21 Before The US
Congressional Committee On International Relations, Subcommittee On
Africa, Global Human Rights, And International Operations.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, for allowing me
to testify today on behalf of the Center for Religious Freedom.
Chairman Chris Smith has been a dedicated and passionate leader on
human rights for many years, and I wish to commend him for all the
important hearings held under his chairmanship in this subcommittee.
They have held governments around the world accountable, including
our own, and given hope and relief to millions of the world’s
oppressed. This hearing today is no exception.
Egregious religious persecution occurs in North Korea, Saudi Arabia,
China, Vietnam, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and several other countries
officially designated by the State Department as "Countries of
Particular Concern," and is being addressed by the other witnesses
today. There is an additional country where religious groups of
various faiths face some of the bloodiest persecution in the world
today, a country that is not listed among the CPC’s. It is Iraq, and
it is on this country, and particularly on the persecution faced by
Iraq’s smallest, most vulnerable minorities, that I will direct my
testimony.
We should view Iraq’s smallest religious minorities — the
Christians, Yizidis, Mandeans, Baha’is, Kaka’i and Jews — as we once
did Soviet Jews. The persecution these small minorities face stands
out against even the horrific violence now wracking the rest of the
population. This is demonstrated by the stark statistic that an
estimated half of the members of the small minorities have been
driven from their homes in the past two or three years, either to
other parts of the country or abroad. Their very survival as
communities within Iraq is now threatened by what amounts to ethnic,
or rather cultural, cleansing. The State Department’s Religious
Freedom Reports accurately depicts a defenseless non-Muslim
population that is being pounded by all other factions. Al Qaeda
terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Kurdish militants, and
criminal gangs all persecute and prey on these small religious
minorities.
Their situation is unique: Their religion and culture identifies them
with the "infidel occupiers" in the minds of the extremists, and
lacking the militias, tribal structures and foreign champions of
Iraq’s other groups, they are singularly defenseless against the
mayhem that has followed the occupation. Because they do not govern
any department, they are at the tender mercies of those dominant
groups who aim to take their property, businesses and villages. The
United States has a great moral responsibility to address their
plight, and specific policy actions are required to help them. These
policies will differ from the efforts we once took on behalf of
Soviet Jews. Most of these small minority people do not wish to leave
Iraq. We must expeditiously take actions that will maximize their
security within Iraq, and will draw back some of those who have taken
temporary shelter in other surrounding countries. For the most
desperate among them, we must begin to resettle them here, where
many, if not most, already have relatives who are well established.
While Shiites and Sunnis, who comprise Iraq’s religious majority,
also face appalling levels of extremist violence, sectarian strife,
and official discrimination on account of their religions, it is the
plight of Iraq’s small religious minorities on which I will focus
today both because the situation confronting these peoples threatens
their very survival, and because their situation is not being
sufficiently addressed by U.S. policy and was all but ignored in the
recent Iraq Study Group Report. The very fact of their
defenselessness — they are persecuted and killed, but do not
themselves persecute and kill — contributes to the inverse
relationship between their suffering and the world apathy at their
situation.
Iraq’s small religious groups — Christians (Chaldean, who are
Eastern rite Catholics Assyrian, including the Church of the East,
Syriac, who are Eastern Orthodox, Armenians, both Roman Catholic and
Orthodox, and Protestants, who are Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist,
evangelical and others), Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist),
Yizidis (an ancient angel religion), Bahais, Kaka’i (a syncretic
group around Kirkuk) and Jews, together number an estimated one
million of Iraq’s population of 26 million at the fall of Saddam
Hussein’s regime. The largest group of these is Christian, the next
largest is the Yizidis with about 70,000-500,000 and the Mandeans
with about 6,000-10,000, and the smallest, the Jewish community,
whose numbers had dwindled to the double-digits by 2003. Under
escalating persecution and violence, these groups are fleeing their
homeland en masse. Though they constitute some 3 or 4 per cent of
Iraq’s population, according to the UNHCR, they represent about 40
per cent of the refugee population. This disproportionate exodus
attests to the intolerable treatment and conditions they face inside
Iraq. We have also received reports that an estimated half of the
Christians who remain in Iraq are internally displaced, with those
from the south moving to the north of the country for relative
security.
The UNHCR has determined that they are being targeted for their
religion by militants determined to establish an extreme sharia ruled
state. Because they speak Western languages and have cultural ties to
the West, they have also been targeted for perceived or real
cooperation with the US embassy and the Coalition.
In 2004 a dozen churches were attacked in coordinated bombings and
other similar incidents have followed. Since July 2006 alone, seven
clergymen have been kidnapped and two of them, both from Mosul,
murdered. As the State Department notes, these religious groups can
no longer gather in safety and many have stopped holding worship
services altogether. My friend, the Chaldean Archbishop of Basra, who
says his prayers in the language of Jesus, Aramaic, as is the
Chaldean tradition, has been transferred apparently for security
reasons to the diocese of Australia and New Zealand, and his Basra
diocese now has only a couple of hundred families remaining. These
churches are not just lying low, they are being eradicated.
Christian, Mandean and other women in some areas are being violently
pressured to conform to supposed Islamic conduct and dress, with some
killed or maimed, while men who operate liquor stores and cinemas
have also been violently attacked by extremists. Flyers were posted
at Mosul University this month declaring: "in cases where non-Muslims
do not conform to wearing the Hijab (woman’s head cover) and are not
conservative with their attire in accordance with the Islamic way,
the violators will have the Sharia and the Islamic law applied to
them." It was in Mosul that some female students were murdered for
wearing Western clothes and having a picnic with men in 2005 and
where Orthodox priest Fr. Paulis Iskander was beheaded and
dismembered on October 11.
Some of the death threats against non-Muslim minorities have been
personal and some of these have been collected and translated, such
as the samples that follow that were provided to the Center for
Religious Freedom by the Chaldean Federation of America.:
"To the traitor, apostate Amir XX, after we warned you more than once
to quit working with the American occupiers, but you did not learn
from what happened to others, and you continued, you and your infidel
wife XXX by opening a women hair cutting place and this is among the
forbidden things for us, and therefore we are telling you and your
wife to quit these deeds and to pay the amount of (20,000) thousand
dollars in protective tax for your violation and within only one week
or we will kill you and your family, member by member, and those who
have warned are excused. Al-Mujahideen Battalions."
"You traitor, Amjad,
We can behead the traitor and we are ready for that.
We can chase the infidels and renegades and everybody who deals with
them and with the occupiers and punish them according to Islam law,
‘The unjust have no supporters’ Allah is the most honest,
The Islamic Army in Iraq."
"This is the last warning~E to the American nasty crusader agent
(James). Our battalion will execute you by cutting your head and
blowing up your house. Allah willing. Our battalions will pursue the
snakehead your brother (Talia). We will arrest him wherever he is —
God willing.
Copy to the battalion Commander the Mudjahed
Abu Sayyaf and the Commander Abu Therr"
There are many other such examples — and many cases of targeted
killings backing them up. Grisly reports of kidnapped Christian
children being crucified and mutilated after ransoms were not paid
have emerged this fall from the ChaldoAssyrian community. Numerous
cases are also reported by the Assyrian International News Agency on
its website,
This week, I received a letter from the Sabean Mandean Association in
Australia that detailed the cases of Mandeans kidnapped and
assassinated for their religion this past year. Some of the
kidnap-for-ransom victims were reportedly circumcised before being
released, a detail that indicates religion played a role in the
crime.
Listed among the cases was the murder on December 2 of the Rev. Taleb
Salman Araby, the deacon who assisted His Holiness Ganzevra Sattar
Jabbar Hilo al-Zahrony, the worldwide head of the Mandean Community.
He was easily recognizable because he wore the white rasta robes of
the Mandean clergy. His family was prevented from holding a funeral
service for him by extremists who threatened to blow up their house
and the bereaved family was forced to bury him without any religious
ceremony.
Furthermore, such violence against Christians and members of the
smallest minorities is conducted with impunity. In northern Iraq and
in the Nineveh Plains region where up to a third of the small
minorities live, there have been no local police forces established
unlike other areas in Iraq, and the few forces that are provided to
Christian and minority areas from elsewhere have been known to harass
and prey on these small minorities. There are reports that the
judiciary discriminates against Christians and other small
minorities. The Washington-based Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project,
for example, reports that courts in the Kurdish area discriminate
against Assyrians who contest land and property confiscated by
Kurdish militants.
The Project also reports that in the Kurdish areas, Christian and
other small minority towns have not benefited equally from U.S.
reconstruction and development aid; their villages have been excluded
by provincial-level officials from benefiting from water and
electrical systems and denied their fair share of other utilities and
services, such as schools and medical facilities, provided by U.S.
aid. Apparently the US has no safeguards or checks in place to
prevent this. As an Assyrian mayor of one of these towns, Telhaif,
told me in November, such discrimination and marginalization is
making minority towns and neighborhoods uninhabitable and forcing
their residents out. According to detailed reports, once abandoned,
Christian, Yizidi and Mandean properties have been seized by Kurdish
authorities. Such treatment has given rise to charges that Kurdish
authorities are carrying out ethnic cleansing against Christians and
smaller minorities, including other ethnic minorities, such as the
Shabaks and Turkomen.
Government leaders in Iraq have been largely indifferent to the
victimization of the small minorities. The Speaker of the Iraqi
Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was quoted earlier this year
urging kidnappers to target Christian women instead of Muslims. After
addressing the kidnapping of his own sister, Thayseer, the Speaker of
the Iraqi National Assembly was broadcast by al-Iraqiya Satellite
Television as stating: "Why kidnap this Muslim woman; instead of
Thayseer, why not kidnap Margaret or Jean?" The latter are Christian
names, thus implying that it would have been better for a Christian
woman to have been kidnapped, raped and killed.
The United States Government urgently needs to take effective
measures to help the most vulnerable of Iraq’s religious groups. The
US owes a special obligation to these peoples because their
non-Muslim status associates them with the American occupation in the
minds of Islamist extremists. Furthermore, they alone are
defenseless, lacking militias, social structures and governing
authority. Such measures should include actions that would help these
peoples, who have maintained a presence in Iraq for thousands of
years, to survive inside Iraq, as well as actions that would help the
most desperate among them find sanctuary abroad. All such measures
should be expeditiously implemented. They are:
Appoint a Special Aid Coordinator for Iraq as recommended by the Iraq
Study Group. This post could prove to be very helpful in sustaining
Christian and small minority communities, particularly those in
northern Iraq that are being now marginalized.
Provide emergency relief for Internally Displaced Persons inside
Iraq. Ensure that this aid reaches the needy Christians, and other
small minorities now amassing in northern areas of Iraq.
Ensure that US reconstruction aid and development assistance is
equitably distributed to Christian, Yizidi, Mandean and other small
minority communities, including the ethnic minorities, the Shabaks
and Turkomen, particularly in northern Kurdish areas where many are
now fleeing from other parts of Iraq and where the US carries much
influence. Legitimate, independent, local leadership of these
minority communities should be consulted about the reconstruction
priorities of their communities. Kurdish authorities must not be
allowed to use US aid to ethnically cleanse northern Iraq.
Support the establishment of a new autonomous district that would be
jointly governed by ChaldoAssyrian Christians, Shabaks (an ethnic
minority with Shiite roots), Yizidis and other small minorities in
the Nineveh Plains, an initiative provided for under article 125 of
Iraq’s Constitution.
Support the formation of police forces drawn from the local minority
populations for Christian and small minority areas in the Nineveh
Plains, as consistent with a decision of the Iraqi National Assembly
and implemented elsewhere in Iraq.
Use more effective diplomacy with Iraqi leaders, particularly Kurdish
leaders, to insist on the protection and equitable treatment of small
religious minorities.
Resettle in the United States the most vulnerable members of the
Christian and other smallest minorities. This group includes those
orphaned, widowed, and maimed by targeted violence. There are over
thousands of such refugees who seek to join relatives already in the
US. Last year the US admitted a mere 198 refugees from Iraq, and is
already authorized to admit up to 20,000. The US must provide funding
to the UNHCR for the processing of such people and admit greater
numbers.
Many other steps could be taken as well. While no group is spared
suffering in Iraq, the smallest minorities are defenseless and the
most vulnerable. In addition, they are viewed as collaborators of
American occupiers by extremists. Today these Iraqi Christian
ChaldoAssyrians, Yizidis, Mandeans, and others are comparable to
yesteryear’s Soviet Jews. They need our help to survive egregious and
pervasive religious persecution and discrimination. The State
Department’s Religious Freedom Reports describes much of their
suffering, but U.S. policy in their regard has been lacking.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This concludes my testimony.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
