In spite of the Release of the Bishop of Mosul: The Mass Flight of the Assyro-Chaldean Christians is not to be stopped.

The release of the kidnapped highest bishop of the Syrian Catholic Church in Mosul, Basilius Georg Qasmusa, will not be able to stop the mass flight in panic of Assyro-Chaldean Christians from Central and South Iraq and above all from the Sunni Arab regions. There were some 80.000 - 90.000 Assyro-Chaldeans living in Mosul alone. The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates that the number of murdered Christians is more than 300, and the number of churches completely or partially destroyed has reached 25. "˜Radical Muslims, Baathists and criminal gangs attack members of the Christian minority on the street, there are kidnappings, torture, rape and murders, but there are hardly any more reports of these in the press!”, said the president of the GfbV-International Tilman Zülch. "But each of these acts increases the insecurity and fear of the 650.000 - 750.000 Aramaic-speaking Assyro-Chaldeans in Irak. Fellow-sufferers with them are the 50.000 Mandeans, whose pre-Christian religion goes back to John the Baptist. Their liturgical language is Aramaic.”

Meanwhile the number of Assyro-Chaldean Christians to have fled to the autonomous Kurd North Iraq has reached 11.000. In Jordan, Syria and the Lebanon there are some 40.000 - 60.000 refugees. In Iraqi Kurdistan they have been given a warm welcome and a reception committee has been formed. The Deputy Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr Sargis Aghajan, belongs to the minority himself.

The refugees receive welfare payments, some have been promised land and assistance in building houses. The Society for Threatened Peoples appealed in December 2004 to the 25 states of the EU, the USA, Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, as also the EU Commission and the members of parliament asking for funds to be set up to provide for the refugees and help them to settle down in North Iraq. Our human rights organisation has already received a number of positive replies.