By Erica Goode and Stephen Farrell
The protest was small but determined. About 75 Christians and others gathered at a church here on Monday to demand that the Iraqi Parliament reinstate a section of an earlier version of the provincial elections law that ensured political representation for Iraq's minorities.
The provision, which allowed for provincial council seats for Christians and two other minority groups, was dropped before Parliament approved the elections law on Sept. 24.
The protesters, holding lighted candles, marched from the front steps of Mar Yousef Church in central Baghdad to the church’s garden, where church leaders gave speeches and a brief prayer was said.
“We have a question mark at this point about why our government is rejecting us,” said Thair al-Sheekh, a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad, who attended the late afternoon gathering. “They told us we don’t have a place in our government, and we don’t know why.”
Parliament’s removal of the provision for minorities, he said, was the most significant political development for Christians since American troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“I think it is the first time our government said that they don’t want the Christians to stay here,” he said. “This is what we understand from this decision.”
The organizers of the protest said that they were pleased with the turnout and happy that several tribal leaders and other Muslim representatives from a council in the Karada neighborhood came to show their support.
But some participants said that they were disheartened by the relatively small size of the gathering. Many Christians stayed away out of fear of bombings or other violence, they said.
“My friends are afraid, and they said I was mad to come here,” said a 50-year old woman who identified herself as a high school physics teacher but requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.
“But I don’t care about death,” the woman said, adding that she came to stand up for her religion and her political rights.
Marwan Arkan, 20, said that the situation for Christians in Iraq was still perilous. Last week, he said, he was kidnapped by gunmen as he walked to Sacred Heart Church, where he works. The kidnappers held him for three days, he said, beat him and finally let him go, for reasons that were unclear to him.
“I thought that they kidnapped me because they wanted to reach our priest, but why did they do that?” Mr. Arkan asked. “Did they want to threaten us?”
He said that when Parliament dropped the provision for minorities from the provincial elections law, “they canceled us from Iraq, as if someone had kicked you out of your house.”
The law, passed on Sept. 24, still requires the approval of a three-member presidential panel led by President Jalal Talabani before it can take effect, clearing the way for elections to be held in most of the country early next year.
In passing the law, Parliament set aside the most contentious issue it faced, how to resolve a bitter dispute among Kurds, Turkmens, Christians and others over control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
The provision on minorities that was removed from a draft version of the law provided 13 provincial council seats for Christians and 2 seats for two small minority groups, Yazidis and Shabeks, in six provinces.
Younadim Kanna, head of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and the only Christian member of Parliament, said that the presidential panel had indicated it would approve the elections law, but that it would also recommend to Parliament that the measure dealing with minorities be reinstated. Mr. Kanna said he hoped to present to the speaker of the Parliament on Tuesday a petition signed by 50 members requesting that the lawmakers vote again on the set-asides for minorities.
More than a million Christians once lived in Iraq, but their numbers have dwindled to 500,000 or fewer.
The United Nations has expressed strong support for the concerns of Christians and other minorities about the election law. Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker of the Parliament, also called for the article to be put back into the law. “There was no intention, in fact, to exclude the minorities,” Mr. Attiya said, adding that the removal of the article was “an unintentional mistake.”
But Mr. Kanna said arguments over the seats allotted for Yazidis and Shabeks, and resistance to the provision within two large Shiite political parties, had led to the measure being dropped.
The protesters, holding lighted candles, marched from the front steps of Mar Yousef Church in central Baghdad to the church’s garden, where church leaders gave speeches and a brief prayer was said.
“We have a question mark at this point about why our government is rejecting us,” said Thair al-Sheekh, a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad, who attended the late afternoon gathering. “They told us we don’t have a place in our government, and we don’t know why.”
Parliament’s removal of the provision for minorities, he said, was the most significant political development for Christians since American troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“I think it is the first time our government said that they don’t want the Christians to stay here,” he said. “This is what we understand from this decision.”
The organizers of the protest said that they were pleased with the turnout and happy that several tribal leaders and other Muslim representatives from a council in the Karada neighborhood came to show their support.
But some participants said that they were disheartened by the relatively small size of the gathering. Many Christians stayed away out of fear of bombings or other violence, they said.
“My friends are afraid, and they said I was mad to come here,” said a 50-year old woman who identified herself as a high school physics teacher but requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.
“But I don’t care about death,” the woman said, adding that she came to stand up for her religion and her political rights.
Marwan Arkan, 20, said that the situation for Christians in Iraq was still perilous. Last week, he said, he was kidnapped by gunmen as he walked to Sacred Heart Church, where he works. The kidnappers held him for three days, he said, beat him and finally let him go, for reasons that were unclear to him.
“I thought that they kidnapped me because they wanted to reach our priest, but why did they do that?” Mr. Arkan asked. “Did they want to threaten us?”
He said that when Parliament dropped the provision for minorities from the provincial elections law, “they canceled us from Iraq, as if someone had kicked you out of your house.”
The law, passed on Sept. 24, still requires the approval of a three-member presidential panel led by President Jalal Talabani before it can take effect, clearing the way for elections to be held in most of the country early next year.
In passing the law, Parliament set aside the most contentious issue it faced, how to resolve a bitter dispute among Kurds, Turkmens, Christians and others over control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
The provision on minorities that was removed from a draft version of the law provided 13 provincial council seats for Christians and 2 seats for two small minority groups, Yazidis and Shabeks, in six provinces.
Younadim Kanna, head of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and the only Christian member of Parliament, said that the presidential panel had indicated it would approve the elections law, but that it would also recommend to Parliament that the measure dealing with minorities be reinstated. Mr. Kanna said he hoped to present to the speaker of the Parliament on Tuesday a petition signed by 50 members requesting that the lawmakers vote again on the set-asides for minorities.
More than a million Christians once lived in Iraq, but their numbers have dwindled to 500,000 or fewer.
The United Nations has expressed strong support for the concerns of Christians and other minorities about the election law. Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker of the Parliament, also called for the article to be put back into the law. “There was no intention, in fact, to exclude the minorities,” Mr. Attiya said, adding that the removal of the article was “an unintentional mistake.”
But Mr. Kanna said arguments over the seats allotted for Yazidis and Shabeks, and resistance to the provision within two large Shiite political parties, had led to the measure being dropped.
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Also on Monday, city officials in Baghdad announced that the government had chosen a division of a French company, Suez Environment, to build a water treatment system for eastern Baghdad. The contract, worth about $1 billion, would include the construction of a large water treatment plant to serve the Rusafa district, which includes Sadr City, a sprawling, impoverished Shiite neighborhood with two million residents. Four foreign companies had bid on the contract, the officials said.
In the north of Iraq, Turkish bombers attacked Kurdish separatist rebels on Monday in a mountainous region near the borders with Turkey and Iran. No casualties were reported.
Mezgen Amad, a leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., also disputed on Monday a claim by the Turks that the Kurdish rebels had killed 15 Turkish soldiers on Friday. Mr. Amad said that 62 Turkish soldiers and 9 fighters from the P.K.K. had been killed in the clash, which lasted for five hours.
"We want peace; we want to stop the fight,” Mr. Amad said. “Turkey has to solve the Kurdish issue in Turkey and give us our constitutional and cultural rights.”
Reporting was contributed by Riyadh Mohammed, Atheer Kakan and Ali Hameed from Baghdad, Sabrina Tavernise from Istanbul, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Iraqi Kurdistan.