A light for the Christians in Iraq ! We must not lose peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan!

35 towns and cities will be taking part in this year’s human rights campaign of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV). This coming Thursday, 13^th December, torch-light vigils in central places, in front of churches or town-halls will be drawing attention to the dreadful fate of the Christians in the part of Iraq dominated by Arabs. In addition many ministers of religion throughout the country will be following the call of the GfbV and after their Advent services and concerts in their churches providing information on the persecution of Christians in Iraq , reporting on it in hundreds of parish newsletters or collecting signatures for the support of refugees. These refugees have been driven out of their country by systematic terror on the part of fanatical Islamists — by attacks ands brutal murders, abductions, rape, bombing and death threats. Three quarters of the approximately 650,000 Assyro-Chaldean-Aramaeans who were still in the country before the outbreak of war in 2003 have had to leave already.

With this human rights campaign throughout the country the GfbV is calling on the German government to increase the humanitarian aid for the penniless Iraq refugees in the neighbouring countries of Syria and Jordan . Above all however the GfbV calls on the international community to protect the peaceful autonomous federal state of Iraqi Kurdistan as last refuge of the Christians in Iraq and to increase diplomatic and economic relations.

In Iraqi Kurdistan the situation is stable with ethnic and religious groups living peacefully together. However this peace is not secure. For the neighbouring country of Turkey , which denies basic rights to the Kurdish ethnic group and also the few adherents of the Christian communities in their own country, has several times threatened Iraqi Kurdistan in recent weeks with military action or actually conducted attacks.

In the following towns and cities there will be vigils (in those marked with * the campaign will for organisational reasons be held on another day):

84503 Altötting, 26871 Aschendorf*, 53111 Bonn, 79713 Bad Säckingen,

96049 Bamberg, 37139 Barterode*, Berlin, 30974 Bredenbeck*, 64283

Darmstadt, 78166 Donaueschingen, 44137 Dortmund, 40210 Düsseldorf,

85072 Eichstätt, 78234 Engen*, 23769 Fehmarn, 37073 Göttingen, 20095

Hamburg, 76185 Karlsruhe, 56070 Koblenz, Köln, 56112 Lahnstein, 21339

Lüneburg, 49324 Melle, 48159 Münster*, 90443 Nürnberg, 26871

Papenburg, 26180 Rastede, 74585 Rot am See, 78224 Singen, 38723

Seesen, 55576 Sprendlingen, 69168 Wiesloch, 38300 Wolfenbüttel, 99421

Weimar, 91791 Weißenburg