No more dithering! Grant refuge at last to Iraq's Christians - suspicion of terrorism against Iraqi refugees is termed a "malicious insinuation"

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) made serious charges against the Lower Saxon Minister of the Interior, Uwe Schünemann, on Monday because he is sceptical about the possible admittance into Germany of Christian refugees from Iraq "for reasons of inner security". "Calling these people, who need protection and who are looking for help, potential terrorists is a malicious insinuation", criticised the General Secretary of the human rights organisation, Tilman Zülch. "Christians in Iraq have been murdered, crucified, beheaded, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, kidnapped or have disappeared for ever. More than 40 of the ir churches have been destroyed and their schools, businesses and institutions have been bombed. Associating them now with terrorists -- although they have not cast a single stone against their persecutors -- is disgraceful and merciless."

Schünemann described in an interview with the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper the planned acceptance of Iraqi refugees as problematical "also for reasons of domestic security" and added: "In Iraq there are terrorists at work", who could use a legal transfer to Germany "to smuggle their people in".

Zülch appealed yet again to all ministers of the interior to follow the recommendation of the Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, and to grant asylum in Germany to a contingent of Christian refugees. A large number of the Assyro-Chaldaeans sees after 2000 years of Christian presence no more future in Iraq . "That we must recognize and accept."

At the same time the human rights expert welcomed the demand of the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Joachim Herrmann, that North Iraq should be supported with humanitarian aid so that the Christians who have fled there can build up a future for themselves. In North Iraq and in the neighbouring regions there now live some 120,000 Christians.

The GfbV has documented the persecution of the Assyro-Chaldaeans in central and southern Iraq since 2003 and it then began a campaign throughout Germany for the admittance of the refugees. So, for example on the World Day of the Refugee on 20^th June 2007: "We call on Germany and also the larger European neighbours each to take 30,000 Christians from Iraq !"

It is clear that the Iraqi Christians will become rapidly integrated in the European countries. Integration hitherto of the approximately 80,000 refugees of this ethnic and religious community has been in the past 30 years a real success-story.