Iraq: Germany must take Christian refugees!

After their return from Iraq the two delegates of the Society for Threatened Peoples International (GfbV), President Tilman Zülch and the Committee member of the German GfbV Section Udo Fahlbusch, have appealed to the general public and the media and also to the government, Parliament and the parties in Germany to turn no longer a blind eye and remain inactive in the face of the tragedy of the Iraqi Christians. "Germany must take up the hunted Assyro-Chaldaean Christians from Iraq together with other European countries, integrate them and finally give them citizenship – without any Buts”, said the human rights experts who interviewed at the beginning of December in the Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan Christians who had escaped from the terror of Islamist groups. At the same time they criticised as irresponsible and inhuman the fact that German courts and authorities are now withdrawing refugee status from the Christian refugees from Iraq, who have been living in Germany since the 70s and 80s with only temporary residence-permits.

"We must not shut our eyes to the fact that the 2,000-year old history of the Assyro-Chaldaeans in Iraq is rapidly drawing to an end”, said Zülch. "Large numbers of Christians are now leaving in panic the Arab part of Iraq, which makes up three quarters of the whole country. 30 of their churches have been destroyed and every day Christians are being taken away, raped, maltreated and murdered. There is no stopping this exodus. If even the US Army is beginning to draw out, no one should be surprised that these people see no future for their families and their people in this country, in which Christians are being beheaded or crucified. In the civil war between fanatical Shiite and Sunni militia and groups of terrorists there is no place for the Assyro-Chaldaeans. The argument of German courts that there is no state persecution in Iraq is crazy. For day by day militia and terror-groups carry out dreadful acts of violence, and they it is who are de facto in power in the whole of Arab Iraq.

Of the 700,000 Christians before the outbreak of the war at least 500,000 have fled. The remaining 200,000 have either not got the material means to flee or they fear being killed in the attempt to flee. The number of Christians in Baghdad has dropped from 400,000 to just 100,000. Of 30,000 Assyro-Chaldaeans in Basra only about 1,000 remain. In Mosul, where once there were 80,000 Christians only a few hundred are reported to be still there.

Only about 40,000 Christian refugees have been able to find refuge in safe northern Iraq, while another 40,000 have fled to the so-called Nineve plain east of Mosul. This region, which is inhabited by about 60,000 native Christians and controlled by Kurdish and Assyro-Chaldaic security forces, is striving for union with the Kurdish federal state in northern Iraq. "If this union does not take place there is a grave danger that the civil war and the persecution of the Christians will spread to the Nineve plain”, reported Zülch. In a letter today to the German Minister for Economic Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul he asked for support to be given to the settlement of the Christian refugees in the Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan and the Nineve plain.