STATE DEPARTMENT ISSUES RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT
News Agency AINA
Assyrian Internationa
10.htm
Oct 27 2009
Washington (AINA) — The U.S. State Department has released it’s
annual International Religious Freedom Report, which details religious
freedom issues for all countries of the world.
AINA has excerpted the passages relevant to Assyrians from the reports
on Iran, Syria Turkey and Iraq — the ancestral homeland of Assyrians
and where Middle East Assyrians live.
The population of Assyrians in these countries is:
Iraq 800,000 Syria (nationals) 700,000 Syria (refugees from Iraq)
500,000 Iran 50,000 Turkey 24,000 Jordan (refugees from Iraq) 150,000
Since 2004 nearly half of Assyrians in Iraq have fled the country
because of religious and political violence directed at them (see
here and here), with most settling in Syria and Jordan.
Excerpts from each country’s report follow.
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Iraq
Repo rted estimates from Christian leaders of the Christian population
in 2003 ranged from 800,000 to 1.4 million. Current population
estimates by Christian leaders range from 500,000 to 600,000.
Approximately two-thirds of Christians are Chaldeans (an eastern
rite of the Catholic Church), nearly one-fifth are Assyrians (Church
of the East), and the remainder are Syriacs (Eastern Orthodox),
Armenians (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), Anglicans, and
other Protestants. Most Assyrian Christians are in the north, and
most Syriac Christians are split between Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Ninewa
Province. Christian leaders estimate that as much as 50 percent of the
country’s Christian population lives in Baghdad, and 30 to 40 percent
lives in the north, with the largest Christian communities located
in and around Mosul, Erbil, Dohuk, and Kirkuk. The Archbishop of
the Armenian Orthodox Diocese reported that 15,000 to 16,000 Armenian
Christians remained in the country, primarily in the cities of Baghdad,
Basrah, Kirkuk, and Mosul. Evangelical Christians reportedly number
between 5,000 and 6,000. They can be found in the northern part of
the country, as well as in Baghdad, with a very small number residing
in Basrah.
There were allegations that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
engaged in discriminatory behavior against religious minorities.
Christians and Yezidis living north of Mosul claimed that the KRG
confiscated their property without compensation and that it began
building settlements on their land. Assyrian Christians alleged that
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-dominated judiciary in Ninewa
routinely discriminated against non-Muslims and failed to enforce
judgments in their favor. There were reports that Yezidis faced
restrictions when entering the KRG and had to obtain KRG approval to
find jobs in areas within Ninewa Province administered by the KRG or
under the security protection of the Peshmerga.
There were also allegations that the KRG exhibited favoritism toward
the Christian religious establishment, and it was alleged that on
February 17, 2008, KRG authorities arrested and held incommunicado
for four days an Assyrian blogger, Johnny Khoshaba Al-Rikany, based
on articles he had posted attacking corruption in the church.
On April 26, 2009, in the city of Kirkuk, three Chaldean Christians
were shot and killed in their homes and two others were injured. On
April 29, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) in
Kirkuk received reports that eight suspected members of al-Qa’ida
in Iraq had been arrested in connection with the attack. However,
the suspects were later released due to lack of evidence, and no
additional arrests were made.
On April 2, 2009, according to press reports, three Assyrian Christians
were stabbed and killed in their homes in the Doura neighborhood of
Baghdad. Although the motive is unknown, a local Christian leader
indicated that the motivation for the killings was "theft."
On April 1, 2009, a Christian man was found dead in Kirkuk, with his
throat slit.
On July 2, 2008, a group calling itself the Battalion of Just
Punishment, Jihad Base in Mesopotamia, sent threatening letters
to Assyrian churches in Mosul, demanding they not cooperate with
Coalition Forces.
In a symbolically significant event, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul,
Paulus Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped on February 29, 2008, for failing to
pay protection money or "jizya" to Islamic insurgents. The archbishop
died while in captivity. Government security forces subsequently
arrested one of the kidnappers, and he was sentenced to death.
The security situation in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad improved
sufficiently to allow 325 Christian families who had been displaced
by sectarian violence to return. Two churches were operating in the
neighborhood–one Assyrian Orthodox and one Chaldean–along with a
Chaldean seminary. Church leaders reported full attendance at services
in these churches throughout the reporting period. Christmas was
declared a national holiday, and on December 20, 2008, the Ministry
of Interior sponsored a public Christmas event in Baghdad.
Chaldean patriarch Cardinal Delly led Christmas Mass at the Virgin Mary
convent church in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood with Ammar Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim, a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq
(ISCI), in attendance.
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Syria
The Government restricts full freedom of choice in religious matters.
The Government does not recognize the religious status of Muslims who
convert to Christianity. The reverse is not true. In the event of a
conversion to Christianity, the Government still regards the individual
convert as Muslim and still subject to Shari’a (Islamic Law). A Muslim
woman cannot marry a Christian man, but a Christian woman can marry
a Muslim man. If a Christian woman marries a Muslim man, however,
she is not allowed to be buried in a cemetery for Muslims unless she
converts to Islam. If a person wants to convert from Christianity to
Islam, the law states that the presiding Muslim cleric must inform
the prospective convert’s diocese.
The largest Christian group is the Greek Orthodox Church, known in
the country as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All
the East. Most citizens of Armenian descent belong to the Armenian
(Apostolic) Church, which uses an Armenian liturgy. The largest Uniate
church in the country is the Greek Catholic Church. Other Uniate
groups include the Maronite Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, and
the Chaldean Catholic Church, which derives from the Nestorian Church.
Protestant Christian denominations include Baptists and Mennonites.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is also
present.
All public schools are officially government-run and non-sectarian,
although in practice some schools are operated by the Christian
and Druze communities. There is mandatory religious instruction in
public schools for all religious groups, with government-approved
teachers and curriculums. Religious instruction is provided on Islam
and Christianity only, and courses are divided into separate classes
for Muslim and Christian students. Groups that participate in Islamic
courses include Sunni, Shi’a, Alawite, Ismaili, Yezidi, and Druze.
Although Arabic is the official language in public schools,
the Government permitted the teaching of Armenian, Hebrew, Syriac
(Aramaic), and Chaldean in some schools on the premise that they are
"liturgical languages." There is no mandatory religious study at the
university level.
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Iran
By law, religious minorities are not allowed to be elected to
a representative body or to hold senior government or military
positions, with the exception that 5 of a total 290 seats in the
Majles are reserved for religious minorities. Three of these seats
are reserved for members of Christian religious groups, including two
seats for Armenian Christians and one for Assyrian Christians. There
is also one seat to represent Jews and one to represent Zoroastrians.
While Sunnis do not have reserved seats in the Majles, they are allowed
to serve in the body. Sunni Majles deputies tend to be elected from
among the larger Sunni communities. Members of religious minorities
are allowed to vote; however, no member of a religious minority,
including Sunni Muslims, is eligible to be president.
The Government generally allowed recognized religious minority groups
to conduct religious education for their adherents in separate schools,
although it restricted this right considerably in some cases.
The Ministry of Education, which imposed certain curriculum
requirements, supervised these schools. With few exceptions, the
directors of such private schools must be Muslim. Attendance at the
schools was not mandatory for recognized religious minorities. The
Ministry of Education must approve all textbooks used in coursework,
including religious texts. Recognized religious minorities
could provide religious instruction in non-Persian languages,
but such texts required approval by the authorities. This approval
requirement sometimes imposed significant translation expenses on
minority communities. However, Assyrian Christians reported that
their community was permitted to write its own textbooks, which,
following government authorization, were then printed at government
expense and distributed to the Assyrian community.
In late March 2009, according to domestic human rights groups, a
revolutionary court closed the Pentecostal church of Shahr Ara in
Tehran, which belongs to Assyrian Christians. According to reports,
the stated reason for the closure was the "illegal activities"
of converting Muslims to Christianity and "accepting converts" to
worship as members of the congregation.
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Turk ey
The number of Syriac Christians in the southeast was higher before
1990; however, under pressure from government authorities and later
under the impact of the war against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), many Syriacs migrated to Istanbul, western and northern
Europe, or North and South America. Over the last several years,
small numbers of Syriacs returned from overseas to the southeast,
mostly from Europe. In most cases, older family members returned
while younger ones remained abroad.
Religious minorities are exempted legally from compulsory religious
and moral instruction in primary and secondary schools. The Government
claimed that the compulsory instruction covers the range of world
religions, but religious minorities asserted that the courses reflect
Hanafi Sunni Islamic doctrine and that antimissionary rhetoric
remained in compulsory school textbooks. A few religious minorities,
such as Protestants and Syriac Orthodox, faced difficulty obtaining
exemptions, particularly if their identification cards did not list
a religion other than Islam.
Restoration or construction may be carried out on buildings and
monuments considered "ancient" only with authorization of the regional
board on the protection of cultural and national wealth. Bureaucratic
procedures and considerations relating to historic preservation in
the past impeded repairs to religious facilities, especially in the
case of Syriac and Armenian Orthodox properties.
In August 2008 three muhtars (the lowest level of nonpartisan elected
official with limited authority) in Midyat filed a criminal complaint
with a local prosecutor against the Syriac Mor Gabriel Monastery,
alleging it illegally appropriated territory by building a wall. On
May 22, 2009, a local court ruled in favor of the monastery regarding
the claims of three local villages. The Department of Forestry and
Department of Treasury filed separate cases, accusing the monastery
of occupying government-owned forest land and Treasury Department land.
Official photographs from the 1950s documented the provincial
administrative board’s approval of the monastery’s borders. The
monastery does not have legal status and is represented by a foundation
established during the Ottoman Empire. The five local court cases
related to forest lands and Treasury Department lands continued at
the end of the reporting period (Click here for complete coverage of
the St. Gabriel Monastery case).
Syriac residents of Bardakci village who fled in the mid-1980s found
upon their return after 2005 that one of the village’s two Syriac
churches had been converted into a mosque without the Syriac community
having been consulted. By mid-2009 construction of a new mosque was
underway, and local government authorities assured Syriac leaders
that as soon as the new mosque was completed, the converted church
would be returned to the Syriac community as a place of worship. Some
returning Syriacs claimed that government authorities reclassified
properties while the Syriacs were out of the country in ways that
caused them to lose some of their land.
In November 2008 a court convicted four suspects, including one
village guard, to a total of 60 years’ imprisonment for the November
2007 kidnapping of Syriac priest Edip Daniel Savci in Midyat. Three
other suspects were acquitted.