IRAQI CHRISTIANS FLEE ANCIENT ROOTS IN ONE-WAY EXODUS
by Haro Chakmakjian
JDEIDE, Lebanon, July 28 2007
Agence France Presse — English
July 30, 2007 Monday 4:08 AM GMT
Reduced to sneaking in the night across borders to escape and then
moonlighting to survive, most Iraqi Christian families are resigned
to never returning to the land of their ancestors.
"Under Saddam we lived in safety. At least we had our dignity and
a decent life," said Duleir Nuri Sleiman, father of three girls,
referring to Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein who ruled with
an iron fist.
With his eyes on Europe or the United States for resettlement,
Sleiman has reached the transit stop of Lebanon, filled with worries
about health care, schooling and avoiding detention by immigration
authorities.
The Chaldean family lives five to a spartan room above a barber’s
shop in the Christian suburb of Jdeide on the outskirts of Beirut,
relying on his modest income as a painter and decorator.
Lubna, a mother of three young girls, told of their escape from
bloodsoaked Iraq through the relatively safe Kurdish north, then
visa-free Syria and on to Lebanon across a river. She is too scared
to give the family name.
"We walked for two hours in silence, just whispering. We were very
frightened. It was night. We were scared the girls would fall into
the water. Lebanese border guards fired overhead," she said.
The family paid 1,200 dollars for the December 2004 crossing, during
which Syrian guards escorted them on Syria’s side of the frontier,
and Lebanese on the other, communicating via mobile phones over a
border river.
The decision to abandon their church’s centuries-old roots in Iraq
that predate Islam was taken after husband Massud’s policeman brother
was killed by Al-Qaeda gunmen.
"My mother told me: ‘Take your family and seek your future elsewhere’,"
said Massud, who works as the caretaker of two Jdeide apartment
blocks. "Now we want to move to a country where we can live in
dignity."
But in their tiny basement room, with foam mattresses neatly stacked
in a corner and Virgin Mary postcards on the wall, the heartbreak
continues.
"Iraq is in my heart, there is no more beautiful country than Iraq.
The very earth is gold. But it will never be the same," sighed Lubna,
the young mother from the northern city of Mosul, her eyes watering.
"We have our security now, but our dignity has gone," said her husband,
whose family like most other Iraqi Christian refugees walks to a
local church every Sunday.
Even so, Jdeide and other suburbs of Christian east Beirut — where
thousands of Chaldean, Assyrian, Armenian and Syriac fellow Christian
refugees have flocked — are targeted by bombings linked to Lebanon’s
own crises.
"We have no problem with anyone here, even if Lebanon has its own
problems. We restrict our movements to a minimum," Massud added.
Iraq’s Christians, with the Catholic Chaldean rite making up by far
the largest community, were said to number as many as 800,000.
Apart from Tareq Aziz, an Assyrian who rose to the rank of deputy
prime minister, they had little political ambition under Saddam who
saw them as posing no threat.
Associated with the "Crusader" invaders and regarded as well-off, they
are now victims of sectarian cleansing, killings and kidnappings at the
hands of both Sunni and Shiite Islamists, as well as criminal gangs.
Their churches have been bombed, homes confiscated and the Baghdad
district of Dora has been virtually emptied of Christians after a
warning to either pay an Islamic tax on infidels, convert or stay
and risk execution.
Without their own militia to defend them, the community is believed
to have shrunk to half its previous number, with more joining the
exodus each day, although in far smaller numbers than the country’s
vast Muslim majority.
"Even if the situation were suddenly to improve — a highly unlikely
prospect — it is already too late to reverse the effects of the
(Christian) haemorrhaging," Rayyan al-Shawaf wrote in a commentary
for Beirut’s Daily Star.
"Without their churches in Iraq, they will never go back," agreed
former bank manager George Semaan, 67, a leader of Lebanon’s own
small Chaldean community.
"There is nothing, no future for the Christians in Iraq. We want
them to resettle here but we don’t have the means," he said from the
Chaldean bishopric in the Hazmieh mountain suburb northeast of Beirut.
The heavily guarded Iraqi embassy, on a hill near the bishopric,
which hands out limited aid and has become a first stop for Christian
families fleeing Iraq, "does nothing to help them", said Semaan.
Christian charities and Catholic institutions such as Opus Dei provide
schooling for the children, while male heads of families take on
low-paid menial jobs and wives work as housemaids — all illegally.
Out of an estimated 40,000 Iraqis in Lebanon, between 15 and 30
percent are believed to be Christians. Before the exodus began,
they made up just three percent of Iraq’s population.
"The Christians, as well as Sunnis and Shiites, are attracted by the
religious diversity of Lebanon," said Laure Chedrawi of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The agency provides those who register with refugee certificates.
Although not officially recognised they do serve as proof of identity,
thanks to an understanding between the UN refugee agency HCR and the
Lebanese authorities.
The UNHCR has on average 20 new registrations a day at its Beirut
office. Single Iraqis opt for the longer and more precarious Turkish
route to Europe out of Iraq.
"More people are being detained but there have been no deportations
so far," Chedrawi said.
Lebanon is wary of accepting refugees for fear of upsetting its own
fragile sectarian balance. It already has hundreds of thousands of
Palestinian refugees and a sizeable Armenian Christian community from
survivors of Ottoman Turkey.
Semaan said the Chaldeans, especially those from outside Baghdad,
often speak little Arabic on arrival. "They ask you: ‘Do you speak
Christian?’" he said, referring to Surath, a dialect of the Aramaic
language of Jesus Christ.
>From their modest low-rent apartments in the Christian suburbs,
the Iraqis take to the streets in the evening hours and mingle with
Lebanese neighbours.
Sarmat, a 12-year-old from Baghdad, could not hide his joy while
hanging out with Lebanese and Syrian friends. "My family just got
papers to go to Sweden," he said. "I hear it’s great over there."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
