"La situazione sta peggiorando. Gridate con noi che i diritti umani sono calpestati da persone che parlano in nome di Dio ma che non sanno nulla di Lui che è Amore, mentre loro agiscono spinti dal rancore e dall'odio.
Gridate: Oh! Signore, abbi misericordia dell'Uomo."

Mons. Shleimun Warduni
Baghdad, 19 luglio 2014

19 gennaio 2017

Kurdistan strives to supply ‘save haven’ to Iraq’s Christians


For each resident within the Christian township of Ainkawa, there may be multiple refugee taking shelter on this comparatively small suburb of Erbil within the Kurdistan Area. Most have been pushed out of their properties over two years in the past following ISIS’ terror marketing campaign, however lots of them fled Baghdad lengthy earlier than the militants emerged, mentioned native Christian activist, Ano Abdok.
“There have been systematic persecutions all through Iraq which left these households with little choices. Some moved right here, some left the county all collectively,” Abdok mentioned.
Ainkawa, with a inhabitants of almost 75,000, has hosted over 115,000 Christian refugees since 2013, one 12 months previous to ISIS’ brutal march into the nation. 
Giant numbers of refugees dwell in rented homes within the township, some have stayed with their kinfolk, and others have had no different choices than settling in a refugee camp close to the city. 
“All of them attempt their greatest to rejoice Christmas even when that’s laborious if you find yourself displaced and much away from house,” mentioned Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda of Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Ainkawa.
The Archbishop expects his Church to be crowded throughout Christmas holidays as many refugees will search consolation in his sermons. 
It’s estimated that Christians in Iraq make up over three p.c of the inhabitants. In line with 1987 Iraqi census, 1.four million Christians, together with the Assyrian neighborhood, lived in Iraq. However many have since migrated to the West after years of persecution and financial hardship.
Authorities officers say multiple hundred church buildings and monasteries in Mosul alone have been demolished by ISIS militants since 2014. However Christian websites have additionally steadily been focused by extremist teams elsewhere within the nation together with the 2010 October assault on the Syrian Church in Baghdad that killed over 50 individuals, together with many worshipers.  
“I wish to guarantee our Christian sisters and brothers that… Kurdistan will stay a protected haven for the Christians and we cannot abandon the excessive values of coexistence. Terror ideologies and discrimination on the premise of religion or ethnicity could have no place in Kurdistan,” mentioned the Kurdish President Masoud Barzani in a Christmas assertion Saturday. 
Kurdish authorities have tried to usher in legal guidelines to guard weak Christian communities throughout the Kurdistan Area. In some circumstances “optimistic discrimination” has been imposed to dam additional fragmentation of Christian neighborhoods within the face of increasing Kurdish cities. Accordingly, it’s comparatively troublesome for a non-Christian to personal property in Ainkawa in a bid to protect the Christian nature of the city. 
“You’re feeling Christmas in Ainkawa when you take a stroll within the streets in the present day,” mentioned Archbishop Warda. “It is actually a special feeling, not corresponding to another place in Iraq.”