News Digest

Plight of Christians Provokes Calls for Special Protection

Courtesy of the Inter Press Service
15 October 2004
By Jim Lobe

(ZNDA: Washington D.C.) While the successful penetration by suicide bombers, who killed ten people, including four U.S. nationals, of the carefully guarded ’’Green Zone’’ in downtown Baghdad grabbed headlines here this week, another measure of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq came from a more-surprising source.

In an article published Thursday in the on-line edition of the right-wing ’National Review,’ an influential neo-conservative activist appealed to the Bush administration to create a ’’safe haven’’ within Iraq specifically for Iraq’s estimated 800,000 Christians, or ’’Chaldo-Assyrians’’, 40,000 of whom are believed to have left the country since the U.S. invasion in the face of growing persecution.

The creation of such a zone, which is contemplated under the interim constitution approved by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) earlier this year, could curb the growing exodus and might even persuade some who left to return, according to the author, Nina Shea, the director of Freedom House’s Centre for Religious Freedom. ’’The community needs U.S. help to create such a district’’ which should encompass the traditional community villages located near Mosul, in the Nineveh Plains’’, according to Shea. ’’They believe that thousands of their members who have fled to other countries in the Middle East over the decades but are not permanently resettled could be persuaded to return to such a secure place’’.

An Iraqi man clears the debris from inside the St Thomas Orthodox Syriac church following an explosion in the Mansur neighbourhood of Baghdad. (AFP/Sabah Arar)

She also called on the State Department to begin providing reconstruction aid directly to the Christian community in the region, and not just to Arab and Kurdish groups living in the region. Calling the Chaldo-Assyrians the ’’canaries in the coal mine for the Great Middle East’’, Shea, who enjoys good relations with the Bush White House, noted that ’’the extent to which they are tolerated in the new Iraq is being watched closely by Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts of Egypt, and other non-Muslim populations in the region’’.

Like the Chaldo- Assyrians, the Maronites and Copts are Christian. Her appeal echoed those of a number of Iraqi-American Christian groups which met here earlier this month in a concerted effort to draw attention to their co-religionists’ communities which has deteriorated sharply since the U.S. invasion. ’’Widespread and systematic abuse of human rights and targeted killings of Christians continue every day in Iraq, mainly in the Kurdish-controlled areas in the North, Mosul, and Baghdad’’, asserted a letter to the U.S. Congress sent by the 70-year-old Assyrian American National Federation (AANF) late last month. ’’

As a result of such atrocities, some 40,000 Assyrians have already fled Iraq since July of this year’’. ’’Iraq, once the centre of the earliest Christian Churches in the world, may soon be cleared of its Assyrian population, the only indigenous people of that country -- ancient Mesopotamia’’, warned the letter, which also called for Congress to earmark five percent of total reconstruction aid for Iraq ’’for the safety of the Christian population and the rebuilding of their villages’’.

Communities of Christians have indeed inhabited modern-day Mesopotamia virtually since the dawn of Christianity 2,000 years ago. Most are Chaldeans, or Eastern-rite Catholics, whose native tongue is Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Most of the other Christians are Assyrian, who belong to different denominations, including the Ancient Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Church, and Protestant churches. The remainder consist primarily of Syrian, Armenian, Greek Catholics; Armenian and Greek Orthodox; and, Mandaeans, who are followers of John the Baptist. Historically, the Chaldeans and Assyrians have been concentrated in the Mosul area, although many left seeking economic opportunities in other regions.

During successive periods of ’’Arabisation’’ in the post-colonial era, and particularly under Ba’athist rule, some Christian communities, like other non-Arab groups, particularly Kurds, were displaced in order to make way for Arabs, especially from the southern part of the country. According to the last national census in 1987, Iraq had some 1.4 million Christians, but most sources estimate that 800,000 at most remain in the country of some 23 million today.

Most of the emigration took place after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 when U.N. sanctions brought intense economic hardship on middle-class families, in particular, a disproportionate number of which are Christian. As the sanctions continued to weaken the middle class during the 1990s, tens of thousands of Christians emigrated to nearby Arab countries, notably Syria and Lebanon, Europe and North America.

Under Saddam Hussein, Christians, particularly Assyrians who were sometimes referred to as Christian Kurds, suffered from forced relocations in the north, and, like Kurds and Shiites, were banned from organising political parties. At the same time, they were welcomed into the Ba’ath Party (which was co-founded by a Christian) and were permitted to rise, as did then prime minister Tariq Aziz, to senior posts. The regime did not interfere with their religious practice, and, in some cases, even provided subsidies to churches.

With the rise of Islamist sentiment, even before the U.S.-led invasion last year, Christians grew increasingly concerned about their fate in Iraq. Popular pressure induced the regime to adopt Islamic slogans, build mosques and even introduce a ban on alcohol, which hit the almost exclusively Christian liquor-store and restaurant owners particularly hard.

On the eve of the war, Pope John Paul II, along with a number of Iraqi Christian clerics made private and personal appeals to the Bush administration not to go to war, in major part because of their fears that the aftermath could expose the community to much greater risks and persecution. ’’The concern is that Christians will disappear’’, Bishop Pierre Whalon, an episcopal official working with the Chaldean church, told the London-based ’Financial Times’ on the eve of the war. ’’The present regime gives them some tolerance; who knows what the next one will do’’.

Those fears, which were broadcast before the war by U.S. Christian denominations but pooh-poohed by the neo-conservatives and other hawks before the war, now appear to have been well-grounded. Christian liquor-store and restaurant owners and their families have been attacked -- sometimes fatally -- in predominantly Muslim towns and cities, while last August, five churches in Baghdad and Mosul were blown up in a co-coordinated series of bombings. At the same time, wealthier Christian families have been targeted for kidnapping by criminal gangs.

Christians have also come under attack by Kurdish militias in the north, including Mosul itself, where Kurds have clashed frequently with Arabs and other minorities as they have tried to extend their control to ’’Arabised’’ areas which they consider to have been traditionally Kurdish. ’’They worry that this may be the beginning of either a jihad by Muslim extremists or an ethnic-cleansing campaign by Kurds, with whom they live in close proximity, or both’’, wrote Shea, who said the administration ’’cannot afford to be indifferent to the persecution facing the Chalo-Assyrian religious minority’’.

The result has been an exodus of an estimated 40,000 Kurds so far, most of whom have emigrated to neighbouring Syria. At the same time, many others from Baghdad and the south have reportedly tried to move back to their traditional homeland near Mosul, particularly around Dahouk, Zakho, and Irbil. It is this area that, according to Shea and the Christian Iraqi-American, should be carved out and given special protection as contemplated by section 53(D) of the CPA-approved Basic Law, on which the interim government, however, has not yet taken a position.

Synod of Chaldean Church in Baghdad Postponed

Courtesy of AsiaNews
16 October 2004

(ZNDA: Baghdad) Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel Delly decided this week to postpone the Synod of the Chaldean Church scheduled for October 19-21 in Baghdad. The decision became necessary as result of the increasing violence and worsening security situation in the country. The procurator of the Chaldean Church in Rome Philip Najim told the decision stressing that it was made before last night’s multiple attack against five Baghdad churches.

An Iraqi worker clears debris from the Syrian Orthodox church of St. Thomas. Reuters /Ammar Awad

According to Father Najim, “it is clear that these attacks were carried out to stop Sunday’s religious functions,” adding that “they are the work of shadowy foreign forces, not Iraqis.” “Iraqi Muslims do not strike at their Christian brothers,” he said. “Instead, these terrorists came from outside to force Christians out of the country”.

Fear is noticeable in the voices of the eyewitnesses of last night’s attacks. “We heard a loud bang and when we went out in the morning we saw that our church was seriously damaged,” said Najwa (not her real name), a member of Saint Thomas Chaldean Parish in the Mansour district. “We are scared. We have not gone to mass in our church since last August for fear of attacks,”

Najwa added. “Luckily, no one was near the building and so no one was hurt. But it was a big blow; the church suffered serious damages.”Iraqi Christians now fear for their safety. “We see posters glued to walls and find flyers saying: ‘Christians, get out!’ What are the Catholics of the world doing for us?” Najwa asked. “Every day, a Christian gets killed, churches are attacked, and yes: We are scared,” she emphasised.Things are indeed changing for Christians, not only in Baghdad but in other parts of Iraq as well.

In Mosul, for example, the beginning of Ramadan has meant that Christian women must, too, cover their heads and wear clothes to hide their bodies. Bushra, a Christian student said that Islamic terrorists warned her school’s principal that female students must come with their heads covered.Some Iraqi Christians are certain that last night’s attacks are related to recent statements made by Muhammad Bashar al-Fayyaadh, an imam who claims to speak on behalf of the Commission of Iraqi Ulemas.

Speaking recently on al Jazeera Hasad al yawm programme, Al Fayyaadh accused Christians of not having condemned US raids against some mosques in Ramadi (western Iraq). US forces justified their action claiming that “well-known terrorists were using the mosques as hideouts and as depots for the weapons used against the Iraqi people”. A spokesperson for the US army in Iraq reiterated that “our soldiers never enter mosques but leave that task to Iraqi police”.Quoted on a local Christian website, Patriarch Delly condemned the action stating that “Christians and Muslims are part of one great Iraqi family. What happens to some happens to all”. Despite claims to the contrary, some Iraqi priests and religious men did write a letter condemning the violence in Ramadi.

To comment on these letters click on the image of the Ziggurat.

Mar Dinkha's Celebrations Untimely

Sargon Y. Yonan
California

In these most critical of times when tens of Assyrian are being killed in Iraq just because of their being identified with their Christian religion, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV, was organizing and hosting a celebration in honor of his consecration anniversary.

How can a religious leader who proposes to be taking up the Cross of Christ in self-denial and sacrifice for Christ's sheep be celebrating when his spiritual children are being slaughtered in their own centuries-old homeland? Is this the sign of a 'true' shepherd; I think not.

If the Patriarch, and all of the our bishops for that matter, preach the Gospel of Christ and ask us to follow his teachings, then why is it that they do not lead the way and show us how to follow our Lord?

This is truly a shame for the whole of the Church of the East, and most especially shameful for the Patriarch to be celebrating in the midst of so much strife, chaos and death in his homeland. Or is it that the Patriarch simply does not consider Iraq his homeland any longer simply because America is much more comfortable and safe?

Anyone with the least bit of common sense and knowledge of his Church will know that the seat of the patriarchs has always been in Baghdad, once the capital of the caliphate, and not in Morton Grove!!! Yes, America is very comfortable and after having lived there for over 20 years it is very difficult to leave it, but then what about the sons and daughters in Christ who have been suffering in Iraq for over 30 years now?

Does the Patriarch not care for them, or maybe is a short-term visit every so often sufficient for His Holiness? And if His Holiness says that he needs to remain close to doctors because of his heart condition, there are doctors in Iraq too. Or rather, if he is ill maybe he should just resign his office and hand it over to another who is well enough to lead and guide the Church!

It is equally saddening and shameful to know that a few weeks back when our bishops met in Chicago for their so-called 'synod' not a word was said about the suffering of our people in Iraq. Not a single statement or prayer for those forgotten sheep. What kind of pastors and spiritual fathers are they? Is a synod supposed to be composed of eating and drinking, rather than discussing the needs of the children of the Church -- especially those in distress and whose very lives are in danger?

I call upon Patriarch Mar Dinkha to cancel his annual celebrations, and make October 17 a day of prayer and supplication to God so that our suffering fellow-Assyrians in Iraq may have their lives spared. His Holiness has been holding his self-centered celebrations for so many years; it is now about time he began thinking about and caring for his children in Iraq. The sign of a true leader, especially a Christian one, is sacrifice and giving oneself up for others...

Selective Reading Deceives Readers

John Joseph, Ph.D.
Lewis Audenreid Professor of History, Emeritus
Franklin and Marshall College

A few years ago, I pointed out on the Assyrian Forum that Fred Aprim had misrepresented the source that he had cited--Hagarism, by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook. He had totally ignored information from that book that contradicted what he quoted from it. I wrote to ask why not tell the readers all that Crone and Cook had said on his subject. The following was Aprim's response on the Forum : "Joseph, I will NOT be that person who propagate[s] ANTI Assyrian material. I will leave that to others...", not realizing that he had just admitted that his information, which he wanted to base on the authority of two distinguished scholars, was deliberately falsified. If Aprim thought that Partricia Crone and Michael Cook were "ANTI Assyrian," intellectual integrity demanded that he either ignore their book, or give his readers the whole truth and then proceed to correct his source with his own evidence. Instead, he quoted their book out of context in order to confirm something that Patricia Crone and Michael Cook did not write or believe in.

Last month one of Fred Aprim's "posts" on the Forum and Zinda caught my eye; it started with these high-minded words: "It is very unlikely that an educated nation would fall in a deceitful trap, because an educated nation is a conscious nation and an informed nation is rarely misguided. Therefore, our people must continue their efforts to educate themselves and undo the mistakes of the past."

With some hesitation I read on. In his effort to educate, Aprim proceeded with a history lesson on the Christian villages of northern Iraq, starting with "Tel-Kepe" (Telkaif), a place that his sources presumably told him "was inhabited by the remnants of the Assyrians." Alqosh, likewise, was not only the seat of the patriarchs of the Church of the East for many centuries, but also "an Assyrian city since time immemorial."

>From the above and other details noted below, Aprim concluded with these "Final Thoughts." "Alqosh," he wrote, "must be joined with the other Assyrian towns in the Nineveh plain, such as Karamlesh, Bartella, Baghdeda, Baqufa, Tellosqof, Batnaya, Tel Kepe, and others as a special administrative region, within the Republic of Iraq, for the Assyrian Christians." History has proved, he "informed" us, that this is the only way that can guarantee the survival of the indigenous Assyrians on their ancestral lands."

I am not interested here in Aprim's personal opinions--right or wrong--but in what he attributes to his sources. Let us look at a few of his references; three of them are lumped together in one brief paragraph. He begins it with "Xenophobe" [for Xenophon--an understandable error].In Aprm's own words:

"Xenophobe in 401 B.C. writes that the Greek army crossed the Zab River northeast of Nimrud. The army then passed by Karamlesh (according to Fletcher, 'Notes from Nineveh,' Philadelphia, 1950"--[the date should be 1850, not 1950] ) and continued on and went by a town near Maspilla (Mosul), where they gathered provisions. [S]cholars believe that the town in question near Mosul was Tel-Kepe. Ainsworth (died 1622) declares that Tel-Kepe was inhabited by the remnant of the Assyrians."

My Comments

1. Xenophon does not "write" that the Greek army crossed the Zab River northeast of "Nimrud." He never heard of Nimrud nor does he mention it in his celebrated memoir Anabasis. He called what we now know as its site, "Larisa" and described it as "deserted."

2. Mespila is not Xenophon's name for Mosul. He identified, again, what we now know to be the site of Nineveh, as Mespila. He and his troops passed by its "ruins." The names Nineveh, Mosul, , or "Kermalis", used by Fletcher, are not mentioned in Anabasis. There is no mention also of 'Assyria' or 'Assyrians.' even though he and his "Ten Thousand" passed through geographical Assyria. He referred to the two famous Assyrian cities of Nimrud and Nineveh as Median cities, "inhabited in ancient times by the Medes." Throughout his memoir, he refers to ancient Assyria as Media. [See Xenophon's Anabasis, III.2,25--p.265 of the 1998 edition. ]

Let us remember that the Greek general and his troops passed through Assyria a little over 200 years after the downfall of the Assyrian empire. For about fifty years that followed, the country was ruled by the Medes, one of the members of the "coalition" that had invaded Assyria. The Greek army lived off the meager fat of the land for weeks. They gathered information from villagers and prisoners that they had held. Apparently, for these natives the defeat of the Assyrian empire was too far back in the distant past to be retained in their collective memory as part of the local lore.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The name 'Assyrian' eventually came to life when Christianity reached northern Mesopotamia, especially when the Hebrew Bible--which spoke extensively of the ancient Assyrians--was translated into Syriac; this was over 800 years after Xenophon had passed through these lands.[For details, see Modern Assyrians, pp. 22-27. ]

4. Aprim speaks of "Ainsworth (died 1622)"; he most probably is referring to William F. Ainsworth, born some 200 years later. In 1840 Ainsworth was sent, together with Christian Rassam, on an expedition jointly sponsored by the British Geographical Society and the Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge. They were to make inquiries concerning Kurdistan and its people, and to look into the life of the "Christians in Coordistan." In the two-volume book that Ainsworth published in 1842, titled Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia, he says nothing about the Eastern Christians being "the remnant of the Assyrians." [ I will be glad if I am corrected on this.] What he reported was that these Easterners considered themselves "Chaldeans"--"descendants of the ancient Chaldeans of Assyria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia."

Fletcher also referred to "Kermalis" as a large "Chaldean" village; actually, all Catholic villages are referred to as Chaldean and he uses it to name their ethnicity--he refers in one instance to someone as looking "More English than Chaldean." The facial features of the Persian Christians [of Urmiyah ] could be traced, according to Fletcher, to the Magians (Persians & Medes).[ J. P. Fletcher, Notes from Nineveh , pp.172,188, 224. For details and reasons why the name "Chaldeans" was used as distincet from "Assyrian", see Ainsworth, vol. 2, p.272; Modern Assyrians, pp.3-9.]

Let us look at some other liberties that Aprim takes in the misuse of his sources. Speaking of "the region of Dohuk," he claims that it "was suppose[d] to be assigned to Assyrians per the recommendations of the Special Commission of the League of Nations when the Iraqi-Turkish frontiers were being discussed in the 1920s." These Special Recommendations say nothing about "assigning" land to the Assyrians, who.to the League of Nations in the late 1920s and early 1930s, were those followers of the Church of the East who had found refugee in Iraq after World War I. The Chaldean and Syrian Orthodox communities were not a part of these negotiations, nor did they want to be. Only the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Mar Eshai Shamun, waa involved in the deliberations with the League of Nations which centered around the future of the entire province of Mosul. What the Special Commission specifically said about these Assyrians was the following:

"Whichever may be the sovereign State [over the province of Mosul, Turkey or Iraq], it ought to grant these Assyrians a certain local autonomy, recognizing their right to appoint their own officials and contenting itself with a tribute from them, paid through the agency of their Patriarch." [ For details see Modern Assyrians, pp.175-194.. ]

Another book that Aprim grapples with is David Wilmshurst's imposing work,The Ecclesiastical Organization of the Church of the East, 1318-1913. For a great deal of his information on the Christian villages of northern Iraq, Aprim depends on this valuable resource; it covers many of these villages as well as the various dioceses of the Church of the East, its monasteries, etc. Wilmshurst also has extensive demographic data on a large number of these Christian centers from the nineteeth century on. According to Aprim these villages have been "demographically Assyrian for centuries," yet Wilmshurst's massive study of over-800 pages, covering some 600 years, says nothing about "Assyrians." The Syriac documents that Wilmshurst had consulted refer to "Suraye Madenhaye" which he translates as 'East Syrians,' meaning Arameans, a usage established as far back as the third century B.C. when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, and almost 1,000 years later, into Syriac. Instead of explaining to his readers why he found Wilmshurst's translation of 'Suraye' into 'Syrian' wrong, Aprim silently substituted 'Assyrian' for 'Syrian' and offered only a sly verbiage to justify his sneaky translation: "Suraye Madenhaye" became "Eastern Assyrians or Syrians as used by some theologians"--informing his readers that only "some theologians" translate "Suraye" as 'Syrians.'

Here again, I am not interested in what Aprim's preferred translation of 'Suraye' is; important is the misrepresentation of David Wilmshurst's monumental work. Nowhere does Wilmshurst tell us that "these [Christian] villages have been demographically Assyrian for centuries.," as Aprim claims. Aprim, like everybody else, knows better than to say that only "some theologians" translate Suraye into Syrians. Are all the Syrian Orthodox and Catholics, or all scholars of Syriac language and literature, theologians? And what does Aprim have against theologians? Haven't some of world's leading scholars in the field of Semitic studies been theologians? [ For details on the meaning of 'Suraya' and the history of its usage, see Modern Assyrians, pp. 9-15. or ask for a copy of those pages.from j_joseph@fandm.edu ]

Aprim wrote that "an informed nation is rarely misguided." A corollary of his maxim would be more to the point: "A misinformed nation is always misguided." That, sadly, has been our lot for a very long time, and those who misguide us have been our "educated," some of whom, as we have seen above, deliberately hide or distort the information that they pick-and-choose for us.

I would like to end with the final paragraph of a piece that I wrote in Zinda in 1999:

"I seriously believe that the single most important problem facing our Assyrian community and the
reasons for our disunity stem from the fact that nobody takes us seriously on the question of our
identity--not our friends, not our enemies. Actually, they all seem to know our history better than
we do, be they [educated] Kurds or Arabs, the Syrian Orthodox or the Chaldeans , the Iraqi [political] parties or the scholars at Oxford, Harvard, Yale or Chicago, or the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington D.C., let alone the Department of State there.We seem to have an identity crisis and for no reason. We have an illustrious history as Christians, as speakers of the Aramaic language for centuries, as descendants of a number of great nations of the distant past. United with our other Christian brethren, the Suroyo and the Chaldeans, we--who also called ourselves Suraye/Suroyo in my boyhood days [and still do] --can fight for our basic human rights [in the land of our ancestors] and we will be respected for it."

To comment on these article click on the image of the Ziggurat.

World Maronites Condemn Attacks on Iraq Churches

Sheikh Sami Khoury
President
World Maronite Union

Dr Walid Phares
Secretary General
World Maronite Union

Tom Harb
President
American Maronite Union

Press Release
16 October 2004The World Maronite Union, and its affiliate the American Maronite Union strongly condemns the attacks against five churches in Baghdad today. At 4 AM, on Sunday, the churches of Mar Yussef (St Joseph), Mar Yacoub (St Jacob), Mar Geries (St George), Mar Roum (St Roum) and Mar Tuma (St Thomas) were attacked with explosives.

The World Maronite Union and the American Maronite Union, on behalf of more than 8 million Maronites around the world, including in Lebanon, the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America and South Africa, considers such acts as an aggression against all Christians in the Middle East. The Terrorists behind these cowardly acts against churches aim at emptying Iraq from its native Christian population, the ChaldoAssyrians and other Christian minorities. This Jihadist aggression not only targets the endangered Christian community of Iraq, but the entire multiethnic reality of the country and its emerging democracy.The Maronite Union stand by their brothers and sisters in Iraq and calls on Christians around the world to pray and act so that a special protection be extended to the ChaldoAssyrian people of Iraq.

The World Maronite Union and the American Maronite Union will initiate a call for an emergency meeting in Washington DC with representatives of the Iraqi Christian communities and international organizations to study the appropriate measures to protect the endangered Christian communities in Iraq.

Literatus

Testimony of Dr. Paul Marshall Before the House International Relations Committee Hearings on the U.S. State Department 2004 Religious Freedom Report

[Zinda: Dr. Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House. The following is an excerpt related to Iraq from his testimony delivered on 6 October 2004].

Introduction

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom to testify at today's hearings on the State Department's Country Report on Religious Freedom.

At the outset, I wish to express our deep appreciation for these important hearings, and for your dedication to ensuring that religious freedom concerns remain a force in U.S. foreign policy.

Such oversight is vitally important both in mobilizing appropriate foreign policy tools by American policy makers, and in sending a powerful message to governments throughout the world that the American people are not indifferent to violations of religious freedom wherever they may occur. The State Department Report constitutes the most detailed religious freedom compilation in the world.

This year's report reflects a monumental effort on the part of the Office of Religious Freedom. They and all the American Foreign Service officers throughout the world who contributed to it deserve to be commended. We will make critical comments about the Reports, but this should not obscure the fact that they are an important contribution to the field of human rights.

One criticism of the Report is that it at times soft pedals criticism of U.S. allies or of countries in sensitive situations. Indeed, on February 18 of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the State Department reports were "sometimes skewed toward the governing administration’s foreign policy goals and concerns." I share this criticism but believe that such skewing is diminishing. One way this shows is in the designation of Saudi Arabia as a country of particular concern. Another is in its more critical view of the situation of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

However, we are concerned that Turkmenistan has not been designated a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act.

Perhaps the most frequently cited problem with the Reports is that their findings do not always correspond to American policy action.

While there are various underlying explanations, part of the problem is attributable to the Reports themselves. Many of the Reports contain an overwhelming and unselective compilation of facts and information without reaching definitive conclusions, or conveying a sense of priority.

Fundamental human rights problems are obscured in a welter of detail. Severe violators may be hidden in an avalanche of information. For example, the report on Germany is as long as the report on Sudan, and longer than the one on Eritrea.

There is a need to give real focus and priority designation in a report of this magnitude and type. Prioritizing who are the worst violators, and, within each country report section, which are the most fundamental human rights problems, is important to ensuring that appropriate focus and concerted attention is given by the U.S. State Department, Congress and, as well as non-governmental human rights groups.

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act’s requirement that the Administration not only to produce an annual report, but also to designate egregious religious persecutors as "countries of particular concern" goes some way to filling this gap.Such a designation also triggers under the Act a Presidential announcement within 90 days of what policies the Administration will adopt to improve religious freedom in the countries in question. The shortcoming of this mechanism is that the designation has not led to any additional sanctions.

Iraq

For understandable reasons the Report does not deal with Iraq, but I believe that it is vital to address the situation of the religious minorities there. Of course, many Iraqis irrespective of religion have been attacked and threatened by terrorists and everyone’s security needs to be assured.

However, the especially vulnerable Christian minority has been targeted for their faith. Consequently, we are particularly concerned about the current situation of the ChaldoAssyrian community in Iraq. The Iraqi government and the media report that a mass exodus of ChaldoAssyrians, the native Christians from Iraq, is now underway due to targeted religious violence against them.

An Iraqi Christian youth clears the debris in the Syrian Orthodox church of St. Thomas after it came under attack overnight in Baghdad. Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters

Beheadings, kidnappings, and assassinations have been documented in recent months, including in September when six ChaldoAssyrian workers were murdered in Baghdad for "collaborating" with the United States. According to reports of the Catholic relief group, Aid to the Church in Need, over the past 18 months, more than 80 Christians have been killed at the hands of Muslim terrorists and extremists, 20 of which murders occurred last month.

In September in Mosul, terrorists kidnapped and beheaded a 30-year-old Chaldean Christian, a manager of a small gift shop – the third recent beheading of members of this community. In the last month, Christian homes in the small village of Bakhdeda between Kirkuk and Mosul suffered two mortar attacks that killed and injured children sleeping in their beds. On August 1, Islamic extremists bombed five churches in Mosul and Baghdad during Sunday worship services.

In the face of such savagery, according to Iraqi government records, 40,000 ChaldoAssyrians have fled over the past two months, especially in the immediate aftermath of the August church bombings. This pattern is reminiscent of the bombing of synagogues in 1948 that eventually led to the flight of virtually the entire Iraqi Jewish community.

An estimated 800,000 ChaldoAssyrian remain in Iraq and constitute the country’s largest non-Muslim minority. They form one of the nation’s most moderate and educated communities. The "ethnic-cleansing" in Iraq of its Christians would diminish the country’s prospects of developing as a tolerant, pluralistic and democratic society.

Without a sizeable non-Muslim minority, moderate Muslims may encounter far greater intimidation in raising their voices against the imposition of the strict Islamic law favored by some prominent Islamic parties and clerics.We urge congress to ensure that the following specific measures are taken on behalf of the ChaldoAssyrians of Iraq:

1. Establish as a safe haven for them, the administrative unit included in the Transitional Administrative Law (Article 53D). This safe haven should include the chiefly traditional community villages located near Mosul, in the Nineveh Plains.

2. Provide the ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq with direct and expedited support from the Congressionally-authorized funds for Iraq's development in order that they may rebuild their destroyed villages, roads, schools, and clinics as well as undertake start-up economic development projects. The community has been shut out of funding due to discriminatory practices that favor Muslim and Kurd groups, as well as due to general bureaucratic delays.

3. Allocate funds for the resettlement of Christian refugees. Many educated and professional young people of the ChaldoAssyrian community, in particular, have fled the country over the past year and are now living in legal limbo in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Greece and elsewhere in the Middle East.

4. Facilitate the ability of those forced to flee by the Hussein regime, or exiled in recent months, to register to vote if they are eligible.

5. Provide across the board political support against the active and passive ethnic cleansing to which they are being subjected throughout Iraq because they are Christians and because they resist complying with official demands to register with state and local governments as Kurds or Arabs.

The next few months will be critical ones as the Iraqi people undertake a census, elections and constitution writing. If the ChaldoAssyrians are now treated, as they often have by the great powers of the past, as one more inconvenient minority in the Middle East who must be sacrificed to the greater good of mollifying Arab, Kurd and Muslim sentiment, the United States will have presided over the demise of one of Iraq’s, indeed the world’s, most ancient religious groups and peoples. We will also have undercut our goal of reconstructing a more tolerant, democratic government in Iraq.

Closing

In conclusion Mr. Chairman, we would like to thank you holding these important hearing and for this opportunity to appear before you.

Bravo

Middle Eastern Christian Conference: Safeguard the Assyrians of the Nineveh Plains

Assyrian International News Agency
7 October 2007

The Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East (MEAC) convened in Washington DC on October 1, 2004 under the sponsorship of the Lebanese Christian, Coptic, and Assyrian (also known as Chaldean, and Syriac) communities including organizations such as the American Lebanese Coalition, US Copts, and the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF). The organizers of the convention explained the two fundamental reasons for bringing together the indigenous Christians of the Middle East together. First, the grouping of Assyrians, Copts, and Lebanese Christians was designed to highlight the common pressures, persecutions, and crises commonly shared by the indigenous communities of the Middle East and to underscore the widespread, regional basis of their circumstances. Secondly, the convention sought to demonstrate that because of the disproportional persecution suffered by the indigenous peoples of the Middle East, over three-quarters of Middle Eastern Americans are indigenous Christians and are neither Arab nor Muslim.

The common misperception that most, if not all, Middle Eastern Americans are Arabs has been propagated by a clever media scheme orchestrated by the Arab American Institute (AAI). Despite a previous grievance filed by Assyrians and Maronites (AINA, 10-27-2001), the AAI website continues to list Assyrians (tabulated as Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs), Maronites, and Copts in the US as Arab Americans. As one organizer noted, "The issue of identity is not simply a matter of semantics. Rather, the AAI has amassed considerable political capital and respect by claiming to represent the 3.5-4 million Middle Eastern Americans in the US." Another participant noted "Not only do we (indigenous Christians) reject the Arab identity, but the AAI's political agenda is antagonistic and foreign to our groups' as well." Common complaints include the Arab group's insensitivity to massacres against Copts by Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt, silence on the occupation of Lebanon by its Arab neighbor Syria, and apathy towards continued attacks against Assyrians by Kurds and Arabs in Syria and Iraq. As one observer summarized, "the AAI has cynically capitalized on our numbers while at the same time pursuing a totally alien agenda." For other participants, the "Arabization" policy of the AAI is an enraging reminder of the same sort of policy executed by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Haffez Assad. One elderly man lamented, "just when we thought we had safely escaped Arabization in the Middle East, we find that the AAI is trying to impose the very same policy here in the US."

The convention highlighted that 77-78 % of Middle Easterners are Christian. How a minority in the Middle East becomes an overwhelming majority in diaspora was summarily explained by one Assyrian leader as "simply put, overwhelming persecution leads to overwhelming flight."

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The keynote speech on behalf of the Assyrian community was presented by Mr. Robert Dekelaita, a self-described ChaldoAssyrian. Mr. Dekelaita is a prominent human rights attorney in Chicago and on the executive committee of the Assyrian Academic Society (AAS). Mr. Dekelaita described the growing crisis facing ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq and the need for the safeguarding of the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq as an administrative region for ChaldoAssyrians. In the context of the convention's theme of advocating freedom, democracy, and pluralism in the Middle East, Mr. Dekelaita emphasized that preserving the ChaldoAssyrian presence in the Nineveh Plains as a vibrant part of the Iraqi mosaic was the "litmus test" for safeguarding minority rights in general throughout the Middle East. Echoing the same sentiment, Ms. Nina Shea of Freedom House likened the ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq to "canaries in a coal mine," and urged all to support the community in their struggle for survival. Mr. Michael Meunier, one of the organizers of the convention from US Copts also appealed that all organizations present should concentrate their efforts on the ChaldoAssyrian community in Iraq that was currently most at risk.

Some smaller Islamic organizations were also allowed to participate in the conference in order to show their commitment to freedom and democracy. Participation by a lesser known Kurdish group, the Kurdish Patriotic Union (KPU), however, caused rancor amongst the Assyrian delegation. The KPU pressed for Kurdish autonomy without similar guarantees for Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains and threatened secession if their demands were not met. The Kurdish position was presented in a pre-banquet forum entitled "Threatened Minorities." With recent Kurdish attacks against Assyrians in northern Iraq still fresh in their minds, some Assyrians noted that "Kurds are threatening -- not threatened -- minorities such as Assyrians, Yezidis, and Turkman." Pointing to recent forceful land grabs, and attacks against Assyrian villages as well as targeted assassinations of leaders and random killings of civilians, the observer added "inviting brutal occupiers of Assyrian lands to this convention is as totally inappropriate as inviting the Syrian regime to pledge rights to Lebanese Christians. A brutal occupier is a brutal occupier."

The much heralded Syrian Reform Party (SRP) was similarly seen as an affront to the Assyrian cause. In their final resolution, the SRP representative called for a change in the Syrian regime, withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and recognition of Arabic and Kurdish as official languages. There was no mention of the Assyrian community in Syria as the only indigenous people of Syria or of the Syriac language, the indigenous language of Syria that predates the Arabization -- let alone the even more recent Kurdish infiltration -- of the region. One Assyrian participant noted, "We have seen the same tacit agreement between Arabs and Kurds to deny our existence in Iraq where we were referred to as Christian Arabs or Christian Kurds. We don't see this as reform, but rather the continuation of cultural hegemony and the policy of denying our existence." By ignoring Assyrian Christians in Syria, the SRP seems inclined only to exchange the tyranny of Bashar Assad with their own -- a tyranny that carves up Syria into Arab and Kurdish spheres at the expense of the indigenous Assyrian Christians."

Even Ms. Zainab al-Suwaij, an Iraqi Shiite moderate, a celebrated champion of tolerance and moderation, refused to acknowledge the Assyrian Christian presence in Iraq by name. The omission of Christians in Iraq during this period when Assyrian Christians are purposely targeted and forced to flee en masse was angrily described by one attendee as "deliberate, malicious, and egregious and calls her sincerity into serious question."

In the final analysis, the convention was successful in underscoring the general deteriorating circumstances confronting the indigenous Christians of the Middle East and in denying an Arab identity for these groups. Mr. James Rayis, a prominent Assyrian attorney from Atlanta, reiterated Mr. Dekelaita's points in the final convention resolution. Still more, for Assyrians, the convention program proved a valuable vehicle for spotlighting the crisis facing Assyrians and the need to guarantee their safety in the Nineveh Plains. The anti-Assyrian positions of groups such as the KPU and the SRP highlighted the impossibility of adding groups who do not share a commitment to democracy and pluralism to any future convention of Assyrians, Copts, and Lebanese Christians.