Christians fear attacks by radical Islamists

The Christmas service in the most important Christian church of the southern Iraqi city of Basra cannot take place this year. For fear that the faithful could be attacked by radical Islamists on their way to the church of Mari Afram the parish has cancelled the service, reported the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Friday.

Three quarters of the approximately 5000 Aramaic-speaking Christians still in Basra in 2003 have now fled because life has become unbearable for them there. Today there are not more than 500 Christians in the southern Iraqi city. They are threatened and attacked if they do not abide by Islamic custom.

Precisely in Basra the Islamic rules and laws are evidently being constantly more severely interpreted, reported the GfbV. Press reports speak of at least 40 women, many of whom were Moslems, being killed in the street in recent months because they violated Islamic customs. On the street and in public places like the university women can no longer go about without a veil, reported a student on the telephone to the GfbV. The university is completely under the control of Moslem students, who dress in black as do normally the Shiite militia. All those who do not keep to their rules are threatened with violence by Moslem students, both male and female.

The murders also of the two Christians Usama and Maisun Farid, whose bodies were found by the police on 12^th December on the main road between al-Fao and Abi al-Khasib southwest of Basra , increase the feelings of insecurity of the Christians still in Basra . The two murdered brothers had been abducted a few days previously by unknown persons. „Assurances of the provincial government that the safety of all citizens will be safeguarded cannot reduce the threatening nature of the situation for many Christian families“, said the GfbV representative Aziz Hassan Aziz at the office of the GfbV for Iraqi-Kurdistan in Arbil.

It was only on Sunday that the British military gave over to Baghdad the control over the southern Iraqi province. Basra is Iraq ’s most important harbour-town on the Persian Gulf .

In 2003 about 650,000 Christians lived in Iraq . Three quarters of them have already been driven out of the Arab-dominated centre and south of the country by attacks and brutal murders, abductions, rape, bombings and threats of murder. Hundreds of thousands of Christian refugees have under miserable circumstances poured into the neighbouring countries of Jordan and Syria . In Iraq the autonomous federal province of Iraqi Kurdistan is their only refuge.