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Iraq: “Don't betray the Christians!”

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Fr. Youkhana with displaced Iraqi Christians: According to the priest, the Iraqi government is not doing enough for them. © ACN

Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana, who is coordinating the humanitarian aid for Christian families in Iraq, spoke recently to the international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) and called on the Western world and the Iraqi government "to tell the truth, namely that Christians are being systematically attacked with the intention of driving them out of Iraq."

By ACN International

The archdeacon criticized the fact that the Iraqi government denies this and that in the international media too there are voices that assert that the terror is directed "not against Christians but against everyone." And yet, the targets of the attacks were unequivocally Christians, he insisted, adding that against this "deliberate plan to drive Christians out of Iraq" there is no counter plan. According to him, neither the Iraqi government nor the international community is doing enough.

Archdeacon Youkhana insisted that it is not enough to condemn the events that have already happened. For example, the church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad, where 48 were killed in an attack last October, had already previously been attacked in 2004. "The condemnations achieved nothing," he lamented.

View the country profile of Iraq.

Breaking News from Iraq

• 19/05/2011: Iraq: Young Christian beheaded and mutilated in Northern Iraq
• 14/01/2011: Iraq: “Don't betray the Christians!”
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Fr. Youkhana went on to say that Iraqi Christians were not principally afraid of the current wave of attacks, but were fearful for the future and about what "is yet to come." Above all, they feared the constantly advancing Islamization of their society. Already today, many Christian women dare only to leave their houses when wearing a veil, as the high social pressure is put on those who are seen as different; they are not accepted. Only recently, he added, the music faculty of Baghdad University had been closed, since music was regarded as incompatible with the fundamentalist interpretation of the Sharia law. Moreover, some senior Muslim clerics had demanded the segregation of the sexes at the universities.

 During the interview, Fr. Youkhana also criticized the fact that the Iraqi constitution discriminates against Christians. For example, it requires that in the Constitutional Court of the country, senior Islamic clerics must always be present as judges. "The constitution must recognize Christians as having equal rights and must not be allowed to make them into second or third class citizens," he insisted. It was also not enough, he said, "to limit our demands to better protection of the churches, for what about the schools, the homes, their normal everyday life?"

Are Western countries “naive”?

He gave the example of a Christian engineer who the police had recently warned to leave his house. He had been told that he should get his neighbours to do the shopping for him and not to open the door when anybody knocked. "But how is a family to live in such circumstances?" He asked. At the same time though, he described as "naive" the notion that Western countries were willing to take in Iraqi refugees. In this way, he said, they were indirectly helping to empty Iraq of its Christian presence. Instead, people should be helped to stay on in their own homes.

Christians are finding their lives more and more circumscribed, he said, and have little hope left. Many are thinking only of fleeing. Of the more than one million Christians who once lived in Iraq there are now only around 300,000 left, he reckons. Every week four flights leave Baghdad bound for the Lebanese capital Beirut. Most of the passengers are Christians. He also wondered at the fact that many families seem to make the decision to flee spontaneously, while they are sitting together in the evening. "In a single evening they make the decision to leave their homes, their workplaces and everything their forefathers have handed down to them over the long centuries," Archdeacon Youkhana said, adding that many people are fleeing even from the safe regions where there is no violence, simply because they can see no future for themselves and their families.

The most important task for the Christian Churches, he believes, is to give the people reasons for greater confidence and hope. "Even before the collapse of the country, people were inwardly broken. The entire country is traumatized," he observed. Trauma therapy was becoming important, above all for children and young people. The social damage caused to the country by the war and the violent internal conflicts must be overcome and a sense of human dignity restored. In this the Church plays a key role, since she can bring people a message of hope and tell them "Do not be afraid!” he believes. But of course material support is also crucial, he said. After all, "Jesus himself did not merely preach but helped people in real and practical ways".

The archdeacon insisted that above all, those families who are fleeing from the 5 million strong city of Baghdad into the smaller towns in the north must be helped. They often possess university level education, yet can find no work and forced to rebuild their lives again from scratch. "On the first day after they have fled all that matters is a safe place to sleep, but later they are going to need jobs, infrastructure schools," Youkhana pointed out.

And yet, the future of Christians in Iraq does not depend on themselves, he said. The Iraqi government was doing nothing. The Christians were "helpless but not hopeless," he added. But hope cannot be based on words alone. It is very important, he believes, that the media report on the situation of Christians. The universal Church and charities such as ACN are indeed offering "powerful moral and material solidarity," he acknowledged, but the Church does not have the capacity to provide the entire infrastructure or to effect political changes. This is where the country's rulers had to step in, Youkhana insisted.

A number of experts suggest that what is happening in Iraq is the worst persecution of Christians of the present time. Only a few weeks ago, an Iraqi group belonging to the Al Qaeda terrorist network declared all Christians in the Middle East to be "legitimate targets" of their attacks. And attacks and abductions are happening continually.