Gorilla’s Guides

Their churches are burnt-out husks and heaps of rubble. Their businesses are targeted by extremists. Their leaders are kidnapped and assassinated. The Christian minority in Iraq, once a community left in peace to prosper, continues to be under threat from a campaign of persecution which has forced as many as 500,000 Christians to flee the country.

During the reign of Saddam Hussein, the estimated 1.4 million Christians – many of them Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics – were generally left alone if they didn’t oppose the government and they lived in relative peace with the country’s Sunnis and Shiites.

Some, such as Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, rose to the highest levels of power.

Things changed after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam’s regime. Christians became a target of violence when Islamist groups and ordinary Muslims angered by the military action began seeing them as the enemy, associating with them with the "crusaders" – the invading armies of the United States and Britain.

Tensions over their religious ties with the West and their differing beliefs to the strict Islamic majority, which had been simmering for years, spilled over as the occupying forces dug in.

"Iraqi Christians became caught up in the overlapping violence and multiple conflicts unleashed after 2003," Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, an Iraq expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Deutsche Welle. "They became exposed to the similar patterns of kidnappings, extortion, beheadings, rape and forced taxation that affected all other communities as the erosion of central government control left a security vacuum that was exploited by organised and opportunistic criminality and anti-occupation resistance groups."

"In addition to this, Christians specifically were targeted by Church bombings and assassination attempts owing to a perceived association with the aims and intentions of the occupying forces."

Association with occupying powers makes Christians targets

In 2004, insurgents launched a coordinated bombing campaign targeted churches in Baghdad. In 2007, after Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be anti-Islam, nationwide attacks on churches hit an all-time high and a priest in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped and later found beheaded. In January 2009, 40 Iraqi Christians were killed and approximately 12,000 fled their homes.

In February this year, at least 10 Iraqi Christians were killed by unknown gunmen in Mosul as the country was preparing for the March 7 elections. The escalating violence ahead of the ballot led to hundreds of Iraqi Christians taking to the streets in a number of protests, chanting slogans such as "Stop the killing of Christians."

During the years since the invasion, life for the Christian minority has become beset by danger. The waves of violent attacks against churches, businesses and homes have forced more than half of the Christian population to flee for their lives, according to statistcs from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Those churches which remain standing are mostly empty, their congregations long gone or too afraid to attend.

"The Christian minority in Iraq has been reduced to a shadow of its former self," said Ulrichsen. "Up to two-thirds of the pre-war community has been displaced or forced to flee the country. Although conditions in Iraq have improved somewhat since 2007, the security situation remains intensely fragile and prone to reversal, and the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes has been very slow and halting."

"There’s a real possibility that 2,000 years of settlement by Christian communities in Iraq is in danger of near-total extinction."

US withdrawal leave Christians’ fate in Iraqi hands

As the United States steps up its military withdrawal from Iraq, the Christian minority is forced to look at the Iraqi security structure for protection. However, the prospect of being protecetd by the Iraqi police and armed forces fails to instill any confidence in the Christian minority.

"The greatest concern about a US pullout is that extremists will exploit any lapses in security and attack vulnerable groups, including Christians," Samer Muscati, an Iraq expert from the Middle East division at Human Rights Watch, told Deutsche Welle.

"Although the Iraqi government publicly condemns violence against Christians and other minority groups, it has not taken measures to bolster security in areas where minorities are particularly vulnerable to attacks, and it has not thoroughly investigated attacks," he added. "Iraqi security forces rarely apprehend, prosecute and punish perpetrators of such attacks, which has created a climate of impunity."

Christians search for ways to protect themselves

One muted proposal to protect the Christian minority involves the creation of an autonomous province on a neglected area of land located to the north and west of Mosul, called Ninawah Plain, which would act as a sanctuary.

While advocates of the idea say it wouldn’t stop the violence against Christians in the large, high-risk cities of Mosul, Baghdad, and Al-Basrah, it would give the Christians a place where their needs could be met, their beliefs supported and their security guaranteed.

The proposals suggest that Ninaweh Plain would an autonomous administrative region in which the Christian minority could govern themselves and would be free to participate in the federalist system which is developing in Iraq.

Creation of autonomous region plagued by problems

However, the idea of an autonomous region for the Christian minority in reality looks unviable.

"The image of a real autonomy is unrealistic," Nizar Hanna, director of the Assyrian Democratic Movement’s Baghdad office, told Deutsche Welle. "Up to now, there are no concrete plans which show how this would work. Even in the Kurdish constitution, they have the right to autonomy in the areas where they are the majority but nowhere is this the case. Besides, there are no areas in which only Christians live. Shabak, Yazidis, Kurds and Arabs also live there."

"To an extent a safe haven for Christians exists in Iraqi Kurdistan," Kristian Ulrichsen said. "Thousands of internally displaced Iraqi Christians have moved there. Although viable on humanitarian grounds, the creation of a specific region for Christians would be a short-term measure that does not offer a longer-term solution to the reconstruction of Iraqi society and the reintegration of its communities."

Iraqi Christians fear escalating persecution as US forces withdraw | World | Deutsche Welle | 09.10.2010

MADRID, 20 June 2010 (IRIN) – Refugee officials and rights groups have urged a number of European countries not to forcibly repatriate Iraqi asylum seekers, particularly members of minority communities, because of prevailing insecurity in the country.

These demands were made in response to recent announced repatriation plans by the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. The UK has already begun deporting some Iraqis, with some 40 asylum-seekers arriving in Baghdad on 17 June – the UK’s third deportation in that week.

“Our position and advice to governments is that Iraqi asylum applicants originating from Iraq’s governorates of Baghdad, Diyala, Ninewa and Salah-al-Din, as well as from Kirkuk province, should continue to benefit from international protection,” Melissa Fleming, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said at a press briefing on 8 June.

“Our position reflects the volatile security situation and the still high level of prevailing violence, security incidents, and human rights violations taking place in these parts of Iraq,” she said.

While its deportations have been criticized for being highly secretive, the British government has insisted the people it was repatriating were from safer parts of Iraq. UNHCR has expressed concern that the forced returns send the wrong message to host countries neighbouring Iraq, namely Syria and Jordan.

Minority attacks

Iraqi minorities – including Christians of various denominations, Yazidis and the Shabak – living in third countries are particularly fearful of any forced returns.

A Chaldean Christian Iraqi refugee who has lived in the Netherlands since 2006 told IRIN on condition of anonymity that he feared being singled out for deportation because of the many attacks against his community in Iraq.

"Kidnappings and politically motivated killings continue to take place in what seems to be an attempt to resettle or eradicate Iraq’s indigenous population," he said.

He is one of more than half a million Iraqi Christians who have fled since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. According to the US-based Brookings Institution, an estimated 500,000 Christians remain in Iraq since numbering between 1 million and 1.4 million before 2003.

“Christians continue to be targeted and there is no protection from the Iraqi authorities,” said Dr Ghazi Rahho, a Christian Iraqi who fled the country several years ago and now works as a professor in Jordan.

Rahho’s cousin, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, a leading Christian authority in Iraq, was kidnapped and killed in February 2008, an incident that led to some 12,000 Christians fleeing Mosul, about 400km northwest of Baghdad. “To date, kidnappings and assassinations are taking place. And other tactics are used to terrorize Christians. Our churches, for instance, are being bombed," said Rahho.

According to an April 2010 Amnesty International (AI) report, more than 100 people were killed between mid-July and mid-September 2009 in attacks targeting Christians, Sabean-Mandaeans, Yazidis, Turkoman Shias, Shabaks and Kaka’is.

AI has called on the international community to “end all forcible returns to any part of Iraq; any return of rejected asylum-seekers should only take place when the security situation in the whole country has stabilized.”

NGO Minority Rights Group International has detailed evidence of violence against Iraq’s minority communities in a June 10 report and expressed an urgent need for legislation implementing minority rights in the country to address an “ongoing climate of impunity that exists in relation to attacks on minorities”.

Iraqi refugee landmark

Meanwhile, UNHCR announced on 18 June that a landmark 100,000 Iraqis had been referred for resettlement from the Middle East to third countries since 2007. About 45 percent of that number lives in Syria, UNHCR said, adding that the referrals acceptance rate by host countries was 80 percent, of which 76 percent were accepted by the US.

Iraqis are the second largest refugee group in the world, according to UNHCR’s 2009 Global Trends report, with an estimated 1.8 million seeking refuge primarily in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey.

The report, released in advance of World Refugee Day on 20 June, said voluntary repatriation worldwide in 2009 was the lowest for 20 years, with around 251,500 returns, of which only 38,000 were Iraqi.

IRIN Middle East | IRAQ: Forced repatriation puts minorities at risk | Middle East | Iraq | Human Rights Conflict | News Item

The article I have chosen to discuss comes from the UN News centre. It has the very boring sounding title of "UN brings religious, ethnic communities to the discussion table in northern Iraq"  but in fact this is a genuinely exciting development. The situation in Ninawa, especially in Mosul, and in the Nineveh plain is complex, violent, and very discouraging. Briefly put there are two nationalisms Arab and Kurdish contending for control, each side suffers but who suffers particularly badly are ethnic minorities caught in the crossfire such as the Yezhidi and Shabaki, and religious minorities such as the Christians. The Christians have suffered especially badly. A lot of very hard and often dangerous "sherpa" work has gone into producing a situation where representatives of every community and body met in Tal Kaif last Thursday.

This hard and often dangerous work has been done by local community leaders, polticians, academics, some foreigners who know and love the city, Red Crescent people, and many many members of local human rights bodies.  (The UN got involved relatively late on into the process and became involved only when they were sure that their participation would provide momentum). Getting to this point where people  met and discussed in a group how to move forward and bring peace to a part of Irak that desperately needs was desperately slow, delicate, and wearing. And will remain so. And yet, and yet, and yet, despite all the mistrust and all the fear and all the setbacks there is now just the tiniest glimmer of hope in Mosul.

Maryam

Security concerns and human rights topped a United Nations-backed discussion among the religious and ethnic communities of the northern Iraqi governorate of Ninewa.

Participants at the meeting which took place on 27 May included representatives of the Christian, Shabak, Turkoman and Yazidi communities, as well of the Ninewa administration, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi Government.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) chaired the talks – the first-ever meeting of the Committee on Ethnic and Religious Communities in Ninewa – in the city of Tilkaef.

Also among the topics discussed during the gathering where the representation of Ninewa’s various communities in Iraq’s security forces.

The UNAMI meeting marked an important first step for further dialogue and action, said Jerzy Skuratowicz, the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative. “While each of the components has its unique and distinct ethnic, cultural and religious heritage that must be preserved, it is also apparent that they all share many common concerns, which need to be addressed.”

Source: UN News Centre |  UN brings religious, ethnic communities to the discussion table in northern Iraq

If you had read the independent Iraki newsagency Aswat al Iraq’s English language coverage of Ninewa governorate in general and the disaster that is befalling Mosul’s Christians in particular you would know that that yesterday evening "more than thirty" Christian families had fled Mosul within a space of two days. "More than thirty" —  you could be forgiven for having the the impression that only a few more than thirty families have fled, thirty one, thirty two, thirty three perhaps … … …  "more than thirty".

The reality is catastrophically worse. Hundreds of Christian families have fled their homes in the last two days in Mosul and it’s suburbs in terror for their lives.

If you are a Christian in Mosul today the overwhelming factor in your life is that to fear being hunted down and slaughtered without mercy is an entirely reasonable fear to have. The source of the "more than thirty" quote is Bashar Kiki who is the head of the village council for Tal Keef. However, if you read the report that my colleague Mohammed Al-Hamadani posted earlier today (Arabic language) it becomes very clear that Bashar Kiki¹ was speaking only of families whom he personally had met and to whom he personally offered help.

However when you count all the Christian families who have fled their homes in Mosul in the last few days and not just those who fled to Tal Keef as we have done and as Bishop Emil Shimoun Nona, Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, has done then the scale of the catastrophe engulfing Mosul’s Christians becomes clear.

Speaking from Mosul the Bishop spoke of a "humanitarian emergency" and revealed that in just one day, yesterday, "hundreds of Christian families" had fled the city taking what they could carry leaving their homes and livelihoods behind them. Those families are now destitute.

IRAQ Bishop of Mosul: humanitarian emergency. Hundreds of Christian families fleeing violence – Asia News:

The archbishop of Mosul is concerned about the many families, "hundreds" in one day yesterday, leaving the city. Bishop Nona speaks of an " unending via Crucis” and denounces the "change in methods" operated by the armed gangs. "In the past we said to the Christians to remain closed in the house – he remembers – but now they are even attacked in their own homes”. The reference is to the murder took place last February 23: commandos entered the house of Aishwa Marosi, a Christian of 59, killing the man and two boys. His wife and daughter witnessed the murder but were spared by the criminals.

Bishop Nona confirms the risk that "Mosul will be emptied completely of Christians”, who are fleeing towards the plain of Nineveh and other places considered safer. "Yesterday I visited some families – he continues – I have tried to bring comfort, but the situation is dramatic. The people fled without taking anything with them”. This is why the local archdiocese has launched an initial emergency response, trying to provide "essential supplies and relief", but the danger of "a humanitarian crisis is real."

The archbishop of Mosul plans to travel to Baghdad to meet with politicians and the central government, to demand their intervention. It is difficult to maintain the Christian presence, he continues, and it is likely that the general elections – scheduled for March 7 – no one will vote. The confining of Iraq’s Christians in the Nineveh Plain, victims of a power struggle between Arabs and Kurds, seems an increasingly concrete likelihood, although the Church leaders have always been opposed to this "ghettoisation". So far, the warring factions have used the excuse of religion and armed gangs to drag the Christians into the conflict. "For this – concluded Mgr. Nona – we now need to find a ‘political response’ to the conflicts, the struggle for power.”

Among those hundreds of Christian families who fled their homes yesterday were the families of two Gorilla’s Guides team members. More Christians have fled Mosul this morning. Among those who fled this morning were a further two families of Gorilla’s Guides Christian team members in Mosul.

When I wrote "Nearly One Million Christians – Most Of Them Now On The Run" nearly two years ago, we had twenty five Christian team members and associates together with their families living in Mosul and it’s suburbs. Today February 25th 2010 we have one Christian team member left living in the city. He lives alone having sent his family to stay in the home of another team member far from Mosul for their safety.

The savage murder of the 59 year old Assyrian Christian Aishwa Maroki by a gang of gunmen who smashed down his front door to get at him and then slaughtered him and and his two sons Bassim and Mokhlas in front of his terrified wife and daughter has terrorised many of Mosul’s Christians beyond endurance. As my colleague has reported in the immediately preceding posting (see نزوح اسر مسيحية من مدينة الموصل جراء العنف | Gorilla’s Guides ) The leader of Tal Keef district council, Bashar Kiki, has said that he personally has offered assistance to thirty Christian refugee families and that he expects more Christian refugees to arrive in the next few days.

Mosul’s Christians are the victims of the complete breakdowns in law and order that have taken place repeatedly in Mosul since the American invasion of Irak. They are the victims of several concentrated campaigns of terror against them. There is the campaign by Takfiri extremists and there are the competing campaigns of Arab and Kurdish nationalists. Wherever my Christian brothers and sisters in humanity look in the city that is their home Mosul’s Christians see only threats and predators. The security forces, the Peshmerga now flooding the city, and the American forces who patrol with the Peshmerga do nothing to protect the Christians. Nor do they do anything to protect the other minorities such as the Shabaki and the Yazhidi.

We have many eyewitness reports from witnesses whom we know to be credible of Peshmerga and their American allies standing by and doing nothing while Christians are attacked in front of their eyes. We have reports from people whose testimony we know to be credible of Christians being "fingered" by the new "security" forces flooding Mosul and then being attacked. We are not the only people with thick dossiers of such reports. Every human rights organisation with a presence in the governorate has such a dossier.

The parallels with the death squad murder campaigns of recent years in which the death squads consisting of  "men dressed in police uniform" and "men dressed in army uniform" turned out to be police and soldiers are too clear and too appalling to be missed. As with those campaigns the aim is explicitly political — to remove a political obstacle by forcing an entire community to flee in terror from their homes

When Mosul’s Christians say that they are surrounded by threats and predators in the city that is their home and that among worst predators are those whose duty it is to protect them they are telling the truth.

Like Bashar Kikim, and Bishops Sako and Nona  we in Gorilla’s Guides know that we can expect more Christians to flee in terror as the terror campaigns against them escalate. We expect increased violence against them and the other minority groups, such as Turkmen, Fayli, Shabaki, and Yazhidi in the run up to the election. We expect the violence levels to escalate against them still further as the issues of Kirkuk and the so-called "disputed areas" come once more to forefront of the political arena. This is the second time in recent years that I have burnt with rage and shame that we cannot do more to protect our Christian brothers and sisters. I believe that it is now very doubtful that there will be any surviving Christians in Irak in a few years time.

Mohammed Ibn Laith

Notes and references: 

1. I have met and dealt with Bashar Kiki on occasion as have many other team members and we know him to be a truthful, honourable, upright, and compassionate man.
2. For a background briefing on Iraki Christians see: Nearly One Million Christians – Most Of Them Now On The Run | Gorilla’s Guides I wrote it on March 23, 2008 in it I deal with Iraki Christian history and discuss the legal (Shariah) situation as regards their rights to live and worship in peace and freedom.
3. However the Takfiri campaign against Iraki Christians in general and Mosuli Christians in particular is only one of several campaigns against them. Most of the attacks on them are ethnic cleansing from one group or another. Some of the best coverage is from the Vatican run Asia News who are unafraid of using their excellent local contacts and contacts with local organisations to get at the truth.
   
   • The homepage for Asia News’ English language service is at this link.

   This report explains clearly the basic problem  IRAQ Mosul: targeted execution of Christians continues in media and government silence – Asia News the last part of which I extract immediately below:

   Local witnesses reported that "the murder took place in front of the security forces, who saw all the phases of the attack, but did not intervene." A Catholic in Mosul says that "the tactic is to murder Christians, because the media does not talk about it." A strategy that aims to push Christians towards the plain of Nineveh, "in the silence and indifference of the government and the international community."

   A source for AsiaNews in Mosul, adds that "Christians are living in panic and have begun fleeing from the city". He explains that "these are not normal criminals," but behind them are "specific political plans" that the government is not countering. There is no information from Baghdad "about who is behind attacks on churches and Christians," but the source is confident that the central executive, the governorship of Mosul and the Kurdish leadership "are aware" of the plan against the Christian community.

   "It is easier to attribute responsibility to Al Qaeda – concludes the source – and the fundamentalist fringe. In reality, Christians are victims of a power struggle between Arabs and Kurds".

4. My colleague Ali who has excellent contacts in Mosul and trained our coordinator there made a simlar point om May 13, 2009:

   Suffer The Little Children | Gorilla’s Guides:
   

   There’s a reason why our Christian fellow citizens are fleeing Irak and not coming back. The tragedy of Tony Edward Shiol’s murder illustrates it perfectly — Christians are targets. Sometimes they are targeted as a matter of ethnic cleansing, sometimes because of warped and fanatical religiosity, and sometimes because they are often seen as being a relatively wealthy and relatively powerless minority.

   Irak’s Christians have been through hell, Irak’s Christians continue to endure hell – the figures speak for themselves. As best I can determine the Christian population stood at 1.2 million in 1991, 800,000 in 2003 and is less than 400,000 today. When I talk to the few of my Christian friends who remain in Irak, they are divided. Some dream of a return to old days of an Irak that treats its Christian minority well and cherishes their presence. An Irak in other words that behaves like Syria and Jordan. There are many who have given up and are fleeing to Europe, to America, or to wherever will take them, finally there are some who want their own semi-autonomous region in the Plain of Ninawa.

   This last option the “Ninawa plains project” is fatally flawed. Its flaw is that the Kurds are determined to incorporate the Ninawa plains into what is rapidly evolving from an autonomous region to a de facto state while the governorate authorities and the government in Baghdad are equally determined to prevent the Kurdish land grab. The result is that Christians, especially Christian families with children, are vulnerable to intimidation and coercion from all sides. No wonder they flee.

5. Further coverage can be found here:
   • Pope’s Pain at Christian Killings in Iraq (Vatican Radio)
   • During Lenten retreat, Pope prays for Iraqi Christians and peace in the country (AsiaNews)

Update: Three more Christians were killed on February 23 after armed men
shot a father and his two sons at their home in Mosul.

Five Killed in Mosul in One Week

(Washington, DC) – Iraq’s government should bolster security to protect the lives of Christians in Mosul, Human Rights Watch said today. Since February 14, 2010, five Christians have been killed in Mosul in separate attacks that appear to be politically motivated, given the country’s looming national election.

Human Rights Watch called on the government to take immediate measures, such as an increased security presence in Chaldo-Assyrian neighborhoods before and during the elections, to help prevent a repeat of a campaign of violence that devastated the community in Mosul in late 2008.

"Iraq’s authorities need to act now to stop this campaign of violence against Christians from spreading again," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "In particular, the government needs to see that those responsible for these murders are swiftly arrested and prosecuted to protect Mosul’s Christians from further violence."

According to information obtained by Human Rights Watch, on February 16, assailants impersonating secret police approached Zaya Toma and his cousin, Ramsin Shmael, while they waited at a bus stop in Mosul’s al-Tahrir district on their way to the university they attend. Speaking in Arabic, the assailants asked Toma, a 22-year-old engineering student, and Shmael, a 21-year-old pharmacy student, for their identity cards. Although identity cards in Iraq do not indicate religion or ethnicity, assailants have often used the victim’s name as a marker of his or her religious or ethnic affiliation.

After Toma produced his card, one of the assailants shot him point-blank in the head, killing him instantly. Ramsin tried to run but was shot twice; one bullet shattered his teeth. The assailants fled, apparently assuming they had killed both students, although Shmael survived. Family members arrived on the scene before the police, to find Toma lying in a pool of blood, his books on one side of his body, his identity card on the other.

The incident has devastated the broader family of Toma and Shmael, who escaped to northern Iraq from Baghdad in the summer of 2007 after receiving threats to kill them unless they converted to Islam. Family members say they want to move again – this time out of Iraq – to join the hundreds of thousands of Chaldo-Assyrians who have fled since 2003.

"By killing Zaya, they have taken everything from us," a family member told Human Rights Watch. "Our only crime is that we are Christian,"

The attack was one of several killings of Christians in Mosul the same week:

• On February 20, the body of Adnan Hanna al-Dahan was found in northern Mosul. The 57-year-old Syrian Orthodox grocer had been kidnapped by unknown assailants from inside his shop a few days earlier.
• On February 17, the bullet-ridden body of Wissam George, a 20-year-old Assyrian studying to be a teacher, was found after he disappeared that morning on his way to school.
• On February 15, gunmen stormed a grocery store and killed Fatukhi Munir, its owner.
• On February 14, Rayan Salem Elias, a Chaldean man, was shot dead outside his home.

While the identities of the perpetrators remain unknown, the spike in attacks against Christians comes only days ahead of Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary vote. Families of the victims and community leaders believe the violence is politically motivated and are appealing to the government for protection.

The Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Emil Shimoun Nona, said the most recent killings could prompt a new wave of refugees fleeing northern Iraq, where Christians live in constant apprehension.  Since 2003, between 250,000 and 500,000 Christians – or about half the Christian population – have left the country, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees. In January, Archbishop Nona was installed as successor to Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, whose body was found in March 2008, ten days after kidnappers seized him as he was leaving the Holy Spirit Church in Mosul.

Human Rights Watch said that the recent attacks recall the campaign of targeted killings against Chaldo-Assyrians in Mosul in late 2008 that the organization documented in a 51-page report, "On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province’s Disputed Territories," released in November 2009. The orchestrated violence left 40 Chaldo-Assyrians dead and led to a mass exodus of more than 12,000 from their homes in Mosul. Assailants targeted Christians in their homes, in workplaces, and in places of worship.

Those killings began shortly after the Christian community lobbied the Iraqi parliament to pass a law that would set aside a greater number of seats for minorities in the January 2009 provincial elections. The attacks escalated after Christians held demonstrations in Nineveh and Baghdad in response to parliament’s decision (later amended) to drop a provision in the provincial elections law ensuring political representation for minorities.

The report also documented intimidation and restrictions on freedom of movement by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq of other minority groups in Nineveh, including Yazidis and Shabaks, during the 2009 provincial elections.

Iraq: Protect Christians from Violence | Human Rights Watch

عقد المهندس الحقوقي اثيل النجيفي محافظ نينوى اجتماعا امنيا ضم مدير شرطة محافظة نينوى وعدد من القادة الامنين وأشار النجيفي الى تفاصيل الاجتماع الذي خصص لمناقشة وتحليل الأحداث التي وقعت في ناحية برطلة الجمعة الماضية مشيرا الى ان الجميع اتفقوا على ان هناك إشاعة أطلقت بان هناك لافتة رفعت من قبل أشخاص،ومن خلال إجراء التحقيقات واللجنة المكلفة بذلك تم إلقاء القبض على الشخص  ولم تستطع الجهات التحقيقية ان تثبت وجود لافتة رفعت وانما كانت هي مجرد اشاعة ولايوجد اثر لذلك حيث كانت هناك إشاعة مبيتة من جهة ثالثة ارادت ان تشعل الفتنة بين الاخوة الشبك والمسيحيين وتم القاء القبض على بعض عناصر الشرطة الذين ساهموا في المظاهرة كما وتم القاء القبض على سيارة الشرطة والتحقيق جاري بالنسبة لكل المسيئين .. ونود ان نطمئن الجميع بان هناك قانون يطبق ولا يجوز التجاوز  عليه.

Some 1,960 Iraqi Christians have been killed by violence in the country since the US-led invasion in 2003, a local religious group said Saturday.

According to the Chaldean Cultural Association for Peace in Iraq, the number of Christians in the Arab state has decreased dramatically, estimating that only a quarter of the 2.1 million who lived there before the war still remain.

Other estimates have placed the number of Christian residents slightly higher, but also say the figure has at least halved.

‘Christians in Iraq are going through miserable conditions,’ Hawal Ziqiya Masho, with the religious group, was quoted by the Voices of Iraq news agency as saying the day after Christmas.

Earlier this week, a bombing near two churches in the northern of Mosul killed two people and injured five others, while damaging the buildings.

Six people were also injured on Friday in clashes between Iraq’s Christian and Shabak minorities near a church in the northern Iraqi town of Bartala, witnesses said.

Shabak residents, who are Shiite Muslims, and Christians fought near the town’s church after the Christmas service, following accusations that the Christians had torn down a poster of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein, near the church.

Security officials intervened to restore order.

Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas in Iraq, and among the most dangerous.

Nearly seven years after the US-led invasion of the city, residents of all ethnicities continue to die in near-daily bombings and shootings in and around the city.

Report: 1,960 Christians killed in Iraq since 2003 invasion – Monsters and Critics

Mosul – Members of Iraq’s Christian and Shiite Muslim Shabak minorities on Friday clashed near a church in the northern Iraqi town of Bartala, 40 kilometres north of Mosul, witnesses said.

Witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa said that fighting broke out between Shabak residents, who are Shiite Muslims, and Christians near the town’s church after the Christmas service, following accusations that the Christians had torn down a poster of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein, near the church.

Shiite Muslims are preparing for Ashura, a holiday commemorating Hussein’s death in battle in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala in the year 680.

Christians reportedly barricaded themselves in the church after the fighting broke out. There were no confirmed reports of casualties.

Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas in Iraq, and among the most dangerous. Nearly seven years after the US-led invasion of the city, residents of all ethnicities continue to die in near-daily bombings and shootings in and around the city.

Christmas clashes erupt outside Iraqi church (1st Lead)