By Medium.com
Nuri Kino
Today, it was difficult to
get through to Bagdad, the Iraqi capital by telephone. Finally, when I
got through late in the evening, it was with a woman I first met in
Damascus in 2009. Back then, she and her family had fled from
persecution and oppression of Christians in Iraq. Churches had been
attacked and bombed. The rapping of Christian women was part of to
everyday life. Priests and bishops were kidnapped and beheaded. Liquor
stores and other shops owned by Christians were bombed. Christians were
seen as allies of the United States because of their religion and killed
only because of that. She testified to these horrific events back then
in Damascus.
The worst
of which was the threat from the Shiite Mehdi militia. Just over a year
ago, she and the rest of her family fled back to Baghdad, as the war in
Syria made it impossible to remain there. UNHCR had placed her family
on a list of quota refugees. This had taken years with a promise to
locate them in a country in the West. But it never happened. As I reach
her by phone, she, her husband and three children are paralyzed. Sunni
Muslims have knocked on their door and demanded money from them,
protection money. They were told they must pay so that their children
wouldn’t be kidnapped.
“I
promise you that the moment Da’sh (ISIS) come here, will prove that
they have many sympathizers among Sunnis in Baghdad. The money they
demand from us, this so called protection money, is how they pay for
themselves, how they fund their arrival. “
When I ask if she is thinking of going to the police, she laughs exhausting. Then it gets quiet. I hear her crying.
“Who would care about us and our report?”
I
ask if they can afford to pay protection money, I know since her time
in Syria that the family is struggling financially. Surprisingly she
responds:
“The
worst thing is my daughter’s beauty, she is 15-years old now and I have
seen how the Muslim neighbors look at her. I am very afraid that she
will be kidnapped.”