Funeral march at the central congress forum bewails the lack of support for persecuted Christians from Iraq

With a symbolic funeral march accompanied by Aramaic song and prayers the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) drew attention during a large congress forum on the Near East on Thursday in Cologne to the tragic fate of the Assyro-Chaldeans in Iraq and called for solidarity with these persecuted Christians. "Left in the lurch: Iraq’s Christians need your help!” was the message on the cross, two and a half metres high, which was carried through the mass of congress participants by GfbV workers and one Assyro-Chaldean living in Germany. "Coffin-bearers” dressed symbolically in long black cloaks followed.

"It is clear that the organisers of the Church Congress do not wish to take notice of the forced exodus of the Assyro-Chaldaeans although these people are suffering under dreadful crimes”, criticised the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. "”At none of their main large events are there any public discussions for example on possible aid initiatives of Christians or churches in Germany for their brothers in faith in Iraq.” Yet the almost 2000 year-old history of the Christians in the land of two rivers is now ending. Three quarters of the Assyro-Assyrians, who formerly numbered some 650,000, have had to flee from the planned terror of the Islamist fundamentalists to the small neighbouring countries of Jordan and Syria or to the overfilled autonomous federal province of Kurdistan. They are living there in poverty and misery and are in need of urgent support.

"We call on the German Evangelical Church Congress, our churches, communities and church institutions to join the human rights campaign of the GfbV and to call on the German government to take up a contingent of 20,000 Christian refugees from Iraq”, said Zülch. The large neighbouring European countries must also reach out a helping hand. The Church must also make sure that Assyro-Chaldaeans who fled to Germany before the fall of Saddam Hussein now receive secure right of residence. To withdraw their status of asylum because the Iraqi dictator is no longer in power is in the light of the new terror pure mockery.

All Christians in central and southern Iraq are in constant danger of their lives, even children and old people, priests and nuns. Hundreds of Christians have in recent years been dragged away, women have been raped, and dreadful murders committed. Bomb attacks have been carried out on 30 churches of all confessions, also on Christian schools and on the shops of Christian business-people. Even Islamic ministers take part in the incitement against Christians, calling on them to convert to Islam or to leave the country at once. Death threats against Assyro-Chaldaean Christians are made daily in leaflets and come by SMS or by post.