Life in hell

Source: Foreign Policy

Almost seven years later, the most catastrophic legacy of the Iraq war is shaping up to be the more than 2 million refugees who are locked in limbo on its borders with no hope of moving on. Here's what daily life is like in the monotonous depths of a humanitarian nightmare.
By Kathrin Schulz, January 12, 2010

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Sweden's New Asylum Policy

Source: AINA

By Nuri Kino

Stockholm (AINA) -- Two years ago Sweden was reported to be the most humanitarian country in the Western world for Iraqi refugees, but since last year the Scandinavian country has changed its policy. Most of the Iraqi refugees are now being deported, many of them by force. No matter their reasons for applying for asylum. I have for four months now gone through more than fifty cases, I have interviewed the refugees, gone through all the documents in their cases. Below is one of many tragedies.
A twelve year-old Iraqi boy, Ronsy, has been missing for the past 17 days. He ran away after his family received the final decision that they will be deported from Sweden. The only trace he had left behind was a letter written to their representative at the social services office in Spånga, Sweden, a suburb of Stockholm. On the evening of the 23rd May, he asked his mother for a thousand Swedish kronor. The money, he told her, was to go to a football team he played on. The next day he was gone. When his mother contacted the school the day of his disappearance, she was informed that he hadn't been there at all.
A priest who assists refugee families stated: "Ronsy is only twelve years old but thinks like a grown man. He has heard that Sweden physically deports Iraqis and he asked if it was true that they can't deport a family if the police cannot find one of the children. He was scared to death to return to Iraq both for the sake of himself and his family."
I met his mother, Janfia Toma Slio, at a community house for women. She shivers and cries. Janfia Slio is an Assyrian from Baghdad, she belongs to the Chaldean-Catholic Church. Her husband was a barber in Baghdad's Christian neighbourhood, Dora. After Saddam's fall from power the Islamist insurgents persecuted their Christian countrymen. They threatened to kill her husband if he didn't close his barber shop. The Islamists viewed his business as a part of the decadent, Satanic culture of the western world. Her husband sent his pregnant wife and their two sons to Turkey where they met a smuggler who, with false travelling papers, put them on a plane to Sweden. The plan was that he husband would follow them later.
What they do know is that he got as far as Turkey. One of his friends wrote a letter to the family and told them that he was afraid that he had died after a smuggler's boat had capsized. Janfia Slio has no idea if this is true. The only thing certain is that they have not heard from him in over a year. During that time she has fought to remain in Sweden -- to no avail!
The family's judicial representative, Helen Westlund, is very sad that the immigration authorities have not seen fit to recognize this family's special circumstances. "Several international organizations, among including UNHCR, maintain that non-Muslims should not be sent back to Iraq but the Swedish immigration authorities neither listen or obey," she says. "Above all one should not deport widows or single women to Iraq but, of course, they couldn't care less. I do not know what more I can do…"
Joakin Hugoson, a lawyer representing the judicial administration within the Swedish Migration Authority states: "When we judge whether or not a person should receive protection we have to apply Swedish law. It can, in certain cases, lead to a different outcome than what the UNHCR recommends. On the other hand we are nearly always in agreement with UNHCR as to what the situation is in the person's home country. Without question, if one is a Christian in Iraq one belongs to a vulnerable group, but Swedish law is developed so that we make a judgement of just those reasons that apply to the person in question."
Janfia Slio says that the Migration Authority's statement is contradictory and peculiar, but right now she can only think about getting her son back. During his entire time in Sweden he has felt very bad both physically and mentally. He had become a little more hopeful the past few months. He played on a football team and made many friends. They called him Ronaldo after the Brazilian football star. His mother shows us photos of her son and then breaks into tears.
"My son, my dear child has run away so as to save me and his younger brothers. Please, please help me to find him. My dear brave Ronsy."
Ronsy's letter to the family's representative concludes: "Forgive me for running away but you have no idea of what I feel in my heart. Goodbye from Ronsy-Ronaldo"
He is wanted by the police. Call +46 114 14 if you see him or know where he can be found.

* Permission to publish this article was given to Baghdadhope by Mr. Nuri Kino

In Iraq, an exodus of Christians

Source: Associated Press

By Paul Schemm

Baghdad (AP) — Iraq has lost more than half the Christians who once called it home, mostly since the war began, and few who fled have plans to return, The Associated Press has learned.
Pope Benedict XVI called attention to their plight during a Mideast visit this week, urging the international community to ensure the survival of "the ancient Christian community of that noble land."
The number of Arab Christians has plummeted across the Mideast in recent years as increasing numbers seek to move to the West, saying they feel increasingly unwelcome in the Middle East and want a better life abroad.
But the exodus has been particularly stark in Iraq — where sectarian violence since the U.S.-led 2003 invasion has often targeted Christians.
The AP found that hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled.
The situation holds practical implications for Iraq's future. Christians historically made up a large portion of the country's middle class, including key jobs as doctors, engineers, intellectuals and civil servants.
The last official Iraqi census in 1987 found 1.4 million Christians in the country. Now, according to the 2008 U.S. State Department report on International Religious Freedom, that number has dropped to between 550,000 and 800,000.
Some estimate the number is even lower: only 400,000, according to the German Catholic relief organization Kirche in Not. The number is echoed privately by many Iraqi Christians.
The vast majority of the exodus has happened since the 2003 invasion, the State Department and other statistics suggest. The State Department says as many as 1.2 million Christians remained into 2003.
Christians first began leaving Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, during the economic sanctions and repression under Saddam Hussein, who pushed more Islamist policies. But the trickle turned to a flood after Saddam was toppled in 2003 and the violence escalated, said a prominent Iraqi Christian lawmaker, Younadem Kana.
"I hope to leave for any other place in the world," said Sheeran Surkon, a 27-year-old Iraqi woman who fled to Syria in 2004 after she received death threats, her father disappeared and her beauty salon was blown up. She now awaits resettlement to another country, saying she can't tolerate the violence and new Muslim conservatism in Iraq.
"How can I live there as a woman?" she asked.
Daoud Daoud, 70, a former civil servant in the northern city of Mosul, now spends his time waiting with dozens of others at a Damascus resettlement center, hoping to follow his children to Sweden.
"Iraq as we once knew it is over. For us there is no future there," he said.
More than 2 million refugees of all religions have fled Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The recent ebb in violence has lured some Muslim refugees to return in small numbers.
But few Christians contemplate going back, according to the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees.
"They simply do not feel safe enough. They cannot sufficiently count on state security or any other force to protect them," said the UNHCR's acting representative in Damascus, Philippe Leclerc.
In a report last year, the head of the UNHCR Iraq support unit noted that Christians are more likely than other fleeing Iraqis to register as refugees in an effort to emigrate to a third country.
"The vast majority of Iraqis still want to return to Iraq when the conditions permit — the notable exception being religious minorities, particularly Christians," the report said.
Signs of the exodus are stark inside the cavernous St. Joseph's church in the middle-class Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah. On a recent day, just 100 Christians, mostly women and children, celebrated Mass in an echoing space that could easily hold 1,000.
Incense filled the air as the parishioners sang hymns in Arabic and ancient Syriac — similar to the Aramaic once spoken by Jesus.
"When I came here to my parish in Karrada, we had 2,000 families," said Msgr. Luis al-Shabi, 70, who started at St. Joseph's 40 years ago. "But now we only have 1,000 — half."
The situation is worse in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora to the south — where 30,000 prewar Christians fled during the six years of war. The now-quiet neighborhood has only a single church and a handful of Christians.
More troubling, when a group of Christian families recently tried to return to homes in Dora, two Christian women were killed, Iraq's Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly said in an interview after meeting with the pope in nearby Jordan.
Some Christians cite the violence as their reason to flee. Iraqis of all religions and ethnicities have been killed, but Christians had the misfortune to live in some of the worst battlefields, including Dora and the northern city of Mosul, both al-Qaida strongholds.
Execution-style killings late last year targeted Christians in Mosul, as did a string of bombings. In March of last year, the body of Mosul's Chaldean Archbishop was found in a shallow grave a month after he was kidnapped at gunpoint as he left a Mass. *
For now, attacks against Christians in Mosul seem to have ebbed. But one priest, who refused to give his name out of fear, told the AP that "despite the current calm in the city, Christians are still afraid of persecution."
Scattered violence continues. On Sunday in a village outside Mosul, the body of a 5-year-old Christian child kidnapped a week earlier was found by police, partially chewed by dogs.
The loss of the small power the community had under Saddam has also played a role in the Christian exodus.
Barred from the army, security services or high-level political positions under Saddam, Christians in Iraq often became doctors, engineers, land owners, and above all civil servants, filling the ministries as technocrats who kept the country running.
But ministries are now controlled by powerful figures in the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities who prefer to distribute jobs to family and close associates, according to several recent Iraqi government anti-corruption probes.
"It's not a policy of the government of discrimination, but of monopolizing and abusing power for their own pocket and for their own sect," said Christian lawmaker Kana.
Kana and others also say many Christians leave because they think the U.N. refugee agency will fast-track them for resettlement — something the U.N. denies.
"Those most vulnerable are the priority, and among them are Iraq's Christians ... but being a Christian does not mean they will be fast-tracked," said Leclerc, the U.N. official. He added, however, that countries like Germany have said they would like to take more Christians for resettlement because they are particularly targeted.
Kana is highly critical of that policy.
"Maybe they are trying to save some people, but they are destroying the community here — a historic and native people of this country," he said.
Such arguments make little difference to refugees like George Khoshaba Zorbal, a member of a prominent Christian family in Baghdad who once edited the church's magazine. He now lives on handouts in a crowded Damascus apartment with eight other family members.
"I will never go back. I'm afraid the situation there would not improve even after 10 years," he said.

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Albert Aji in Damascus, Sameer Yacoub in Baghdad, and an AP employee in Mosul contributed to this report.

* Msgr. Faraj Paukys Raho was kidnapped on February 29 and found dead on March 13. Note by Baghdadhope

At first Communion Mass, pope preaches courage in following JesusBy

Source: Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden

Pope Benedict XVI's only public Mass in Jordan was a liturgy like that found in many parishes in May: It was first Communion Sunday. Dressed in white robes and seated close to the altar platform, dozens of children from all over Jordan received the Eucharist for the first time during the pope's Mass May 10 in Amman International Stadium. Peter Mihko, 15, and his sister Cecilia, 11, were part of the first Communion group of 40 young people from Sacred Heart Chaldean Catholic parish in Amman. Like many in the group, the Mihko siblings are refugees from Iraq."I'm going to receive my first Communion from the pope," Cecilia said before Mass. "Wow! This is something really amazing; it's a dream come true."

Her older brother said, "Words cannot describe what I am feeling at receiving my first Communion from the messenger of God, from the messenger of peace."In his homily, Pope Benedict preached about the need for fidelity and courage in following Jesus, in discovering one's vocation, in building a family, in promoting dialogue with Jordan's Muslim majority and in carrying out acts of charity."Jesus knows what challenges you face, what trials you endure and the good that you do in his name," Pope Benedict told the crowd in the stadium, which holds 25,000 people.

Standing in front of a picture of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the pope encouraged Jordan's 109,000 Catholics to trust Jesus, to trust in his love for his flock and to "persevere in your witness to the triumph of his love."

People should be grateful, he said, for the love of God that can be experienced in the family, "from the love of our fathers and mothers, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters."

"May every Christian family grow in fidelity to its lofty vocation to be a true school of prayer where children learn a sincere love of God, where they mature in self-discipline and concern for the needs of others and where, shaped by the wisdom born of faith, they contribute to the building of an ever more just and fraternal society," the pope prayed. Noting that the local church was nearing the end of a special year of the family, which included a focus on the dignity of women, Pope Benedict urged the people to recognize "how much your society owes to all those women who in different and at times courageous ways have devoted their lives to building peace and fostering love."

"By its public respect for women and its defense of the innate dignity of every human person, the church in the Holy Land can make an important contribution to the advancement of a culture of true humanity and the building of a civilization of love," he said. One of the mothers present at the Mass was Mariana Kardsheh, who came from Madaba with her husband and children, including 8-year-old Natalie, who was making her first Communion during the liturgy."It's no coincidence" that Natalie was chosen to be among the children receiving the sacrament at the papal Mass, Kardsheh said. She and her husband -- childless at the time -- were at Pope John Paul II's Mass in Amman in 2000. "I made my way to the popemobile. He looked at me, I saw his eyes and I made my prayer," Kardsheh said. Two months later she was asleep and dreaming, she said; "I opened my eyes and saw an angel and I knew it was a girl," who would be born.Kardsheh is convinced that Natalie's birth was an answer to the prayer she made in the presence of Pope John Paul and that it was fitting that the girl's first Communion Mass would be celebrated by Pope Benedict. With Catholics attending the Mass from all over the Middle East, including the violence-torn Iraq, Pope Benedict said he knows that the region's Christians are affected by "difficulties and uncertainties." "May you never forget the great dignity which derives from your Christian heritage or fail to sense the loving solidarity of all your brothers and sisters in the church throughout the world," he said. The Naiomi family, Chaldean Catholics who fled to Amman from Mosul, Iraq, three years ago, was part of the crowd at the Mass. Saif Naiomi, 24, said, "We want the pope to send a message of peace so that people can understand that the Christian religion is a peacemaker, I wish the pope could go to Iraq, but he can't because there is no security," he said. Pope Benedict encouraged the people to stay in the Middle East, work for the good of their countries and remain solid in the faith of their communities founded by Jesus' disciples."Fidelity to your Christian roots, fidelity to the church's mission in the Holy Land, demands of each of you a particular kind of courage: the courage of conviction, born of personal faith, not mere social convention or family tradition," he said. Being Christian means having "the courage to engage in dialogue and to work side by side with other Christians in the service of the Gospel and solidarity with the poor, the displaced and the victims of profound human tragedies," the pope said. Christians must build bridges to members of other faiths and cultures, opening a dialogue that will "enrich the fabric of society," he said. And in a region torn by violence and terrorism, Pope Benedict told those at the Mass that being faithful "also means bearing witness to the love which inspires us to lay down our lives in the service of others, and thus to counter ways of thinking which justify taking innocent lives."

Editors: Contributing to this story was Doreen Abi Raad in Amman.