21.06.2007

Sweden gives a good example- Germany must take more refugees from Iraq – contingent solution for Assyro-Chaldaic Christians demanded

World Day of the Refugee (20th June 2007)

This coming Wednesday (20th June) is the World Day of the Refugee: the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has urgently called on the German government to follow Sweden’s example and to offer protection in Germany to a large contingent of refugees from Iraq. In a letter to the Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel the GfbV stressed that as a result of the terror being carried out by Islamist fundamentalists on the Assyro-Chaldaic Christians in Iraq their history is being violently ended after almost 2000 years. Three quarters of the Christians, who previously numbered some 650,000, have already had to flee from central and southern Iraq. "It no longer seems humanly possible that the Assyro-Chaldaeans will be able to return home”, wrote the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch, on Tuesday. "Sweden cannot solve the question of these refugees alone for Europe. So we call on Germany and all the large European neighbouring countries to take 20,000 Christians each.”

 

Sweden granted refuge to about 9,000 Iraq refugees last year alone – i.e. over 40 percent of the 22,000 Iraqi citizens who were able to flee to Europe. Many of them are Assyro-Chaldaeans who have been driven out of the country by attacks on their lives, abduction, rape and threats of murder. Even Muslim preachers have been taking part in these expulsions, reports the GfbV. Imams have been publicly calling on Assyro-Chaldaeans to convert to Islam or to leave the country immediately. Apart from 30 churches, Christian schools and businesses belonging to Christians have already been bombed.