LEBANESE CHRISTIANS DECLARE SOLIDARITY WITH IRAQI CHRISTIANS

AINA
Assyrian International News Agency

10-20-2008 21:13:56
CA

Many Lebanese political parties and parliamentarians called on the
Eastern Bishops to hold an emergency meeting to condemn the campaign
of assassinations and displacements the Christians are being subjected
to in Mosul.

Meanwhile, the head of the Lebanese Christian Democratic Union,
representative Ni’mat Allah Abi Nasr, issued a statement denouncing
the killing and displacement in Mosul and considered them a violation
of the International Human Rights Declarations and against the freedom
of the practicing of the religious rituals. He added: "the Arab and
Islamic world are called upon not only to condemn such crimes in
words but to come up with real action to stop them."

After meeting with the representatives of the Syriac, Assyrian, and
Chaldean Iraqis, Mr. Nadeem al-Jumayil (the son of the ex-Lebanese
President Bashir al-Jumayil) called upon Pope Benedict the XVI
to act to end the ordeal of the Iraqi Christians. He maintained:
"It is a baffling thing that the people of Mosul resort to displace
the Christians from their homeland where they existed for hundreds
of years. It certainly sounds like a conspiracy concocted abroad to
deprive Iraq from its social components and distinguished confessional
fabric." He added, "The Christians of Iraq are not intruders but
have been there since before Christ; how does the Iraqi government
ignore such conspiracy by keeping quiet? And why didn’t the honorable
among the Iraqi people intervene to stop such human bleeding in
their country? And why there is such total silence in the Arab and
international community about such displacement practices?"

He went on to say: "I call upon his Holiness the Pope and the Bishops
of the East to sound the alarm, I also call upon the Presidents and
the Monarchs of the Arab countries to move swiftly to forestall the
execution of such a malicious conspiracy, for any harm inflicted
on the Iraqi Christians is a harm inflicted on the Christians in
Lebanon and the Orient. We will not permit what happened to our
Armenian brothers in the last century — when they were subjected
to the most heinous crimes of massacre, displacement, and expulsion,
and whose tragedy continues until this day — to happen again to the
Christians in Iraq." He concluded: "We will stand by our brethrens in
the Christian communities of the East and their extension in Lebanon
who painfully expressed their deep worries about what is happening
to them in their motherland."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress