Attacks against Christians in Iraq Continue

by Suleyman Gultekin

Attacks continue in Iraq for the Christians and other minorities. There is no single day without incidents, intimidation or such against the Iraqi Christians and other minorities. It is about a year after the deadly attack against the Syriac church of Our Lady of Salvation, and the nightmare continues.

In 2010, Church officials described the attack, which began when gunmen seized the Church during Sunday mass, as the bloodiest against Iraq's Christians in the seven years of sectarian war that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. After the church attack, one witness to it, Rudy Khalid, a 16-year-old Christian who lived across the street, said: "We have lost part of our soul now," He shook his head. "Our destiny, no one knows what to say of it."

We believed that the North of Iraq (KRG) could offer security for the Christians and other minorities but this bloody attack of 2^nd December 2011 tells us the contrary. It caused at least 25 people, many of them Christian, to be wounded in an attack carried out by a group of Kurds in the Dohuk Governate in the north of Iraq..

Dozens of young Kurds – men who reportedly had been "instigated" by Muslim clerics – attacked several small businesses in Zakho, a city that at various times, according to a CNN report, served as a checkpoint on the border with Turkey,. The news network claims the attackers were targeting "a number of tourist facilities, especially facilities owned by Christians and Yazidis." (Yazidis are one of Iraq's smallest religious minorities, their beliefs draw from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.)

It is time, more than ever, to intervene politically and directly on the ground to help the Christians and other minorities if we do not want to see the Christians and other minorities simply disappear from the Middle East, which is also their homeland.

Our thoughts and prayers go Christians and other minorities' victims in Iraq and ME in general.

Suleyman Gultekin

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2684/attacks-against-iraq-christians

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