கிரித்துவ சிறுபான்மையினர் ஈராக்கிலிருந்து வெளியேறுகிறார்கள்.

ஈராக்கில் கிரித்துவர்களுக்கு எதிராக நடக்கும் வன்முறைகள் அதிகரிப்பதாலும், கட்டாய மதமாற்றத்தாலும் அஞ்சி இவர்கள் ஈராக்கிலிருந்து ஓடுகிறார்கள். ஏற்கெனவே சுமார் 50 சதவீத ஈராகிய கிரிஸ்துவர்கள் வெளியேறிவிட்டார்கள் என்று செய்தி சொல்கிறது.


இண்டர்நேசனல் ஹெரால்ட் டிரிப்யூன்

Iraq's Christian minority flees from violence
The Associated PressPublished: May 6, 2007

BAGHDAD: Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.

Then, two months ago, al-Qaida gunmen kidnapped him and demanded his family convert to Islam or pay a US$30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian minority.

"There is no future for us in Iraq," Mansour said.

Though Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before, bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks have taken on a far more personal tone, with many Christians being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind, police, human rights groups and residents said.

The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country's 26 million people, is particularly vulnerable. It has little political or military clout to defend itself, and some Islamic insurgents view it as a fifth column — calling Christians "Crusaders" — whose real loyalty lies with the U.S. troops they are fighting.

Many churches are now nearly empty during religious services, with much of their flock either gone or too scared to attend. Only about 30 people sat scattered among the pews at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah during this week's Sunday Mass. About two dozen worshippers took communion in the barren St. Mary's Church in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday.

As many as 50 percent of Iraq's Christians may already have left the country, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which said it was increasingly concerned about attacks on Christians and other non-Muslims here.

"These groups face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and foreign jihadis, and they also suffer pervasive discrimination and marginalization at the hands of the national government, regional governments, and para-state militias," said the report.

In addition to direct attacks on Christians, Islamic extremists have also targeted liquor stores, hair salons and other Christian-owned businesses, saying they violated Islam, the report said.

"This is not the culture of Iraqis or the nature of Iraqis. We have lived during centuries together in a respectful attitude and friendship," said Luwis Zarco, the Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk.

In much of the Middle East, Christians are a largely tolerated minority that have achieved a measure of economic success in business and the professions, but they are sometimes viewed with suspicion by their Muslim neighbors.

In Saddam-era Iraq, Iraq's 800,000 Christians — many of them Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics — were generally left alone, and many, such as Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, reached the highest levels of power.

But after U.S. forces toppled Saddam in 2003, their situation grew more precarious. In the summer of 2004, insurgents launched a coordinated bombing campaign against Baghdad churches, sending some Christians fleeing in fear.

A second wave of anti-Christian attacks hit last September after Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be anti-Muslim. Church bombings spiked and a priest in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped and later found beheaded.

In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families, demanding they either pay jizya — a special tax traditionally levied on non-Muslims — or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100 years.

One man, Arakan Admon, was wounded in a drive-by shooting last week when his family ignored the threats, relatives said.

In response to the threats, about 70 percent of Dora's Christians have fled, police said.

"The terrorists want to turn Dora into a base to attack other Baghdad neighborhoods," said Christian lawmaker Younadam Kana. "Criminal gangs made use of the situation and they started to kidnap Christians and demand ransom. It is a coalition between terrorists and criminals."

The southern neighborhood is a Sunni insurgent stronghold that has seen frequent U.S. shelling under a security crackdown against the sectarian violence.

In the northern city of Mosul, men began knocking on doors last month, demanding that Christian families pay a $3,000 tax that would be used to fight the U.S.-led forces, local residents said. Some paid; others fled.

Mansour, a 63-year-old retiree, said that while many other Christians left, he chose to stay in his Amariyah neighborhood in western Baghdad, hoping that the Baghdad security plan, which U.S.-led forces launched on Feb. 14, would improve the situation.

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