Hinweis zum Sprachgebrauch in älteren Beiträgen
Der folgende ältere Beitrag kann Sprache und Formulierungen enthalten, die heute nicht mehr den Ansprüchen einer diskriminierungsfreien und sensiblen Ausdrucksweise entsprechen. Er wurde im historischen Kontext verfasst und bewusst unverändert gelassen, um unsere jahrzehntelange Menschenrechtsarbeit zu dokumentieren.
The murder of the abducted Chaldaic Catholic Archbishop of Mossul, Paulos Faradsh Rahho, is in the opinion of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) „a clear message” of the Arab Islamist terror-groups to the Christians of Iraq to leave for ever the Nineveh Plain near Mossul. The region is one of the main settlement areas of the Christian Assyro-Chaldaeans, who are at present being protected by the Kurdish Peshmerga from the neighbouring federal state of Kurdistan. As has been confirmed by Bishop Petros of Zakho and the GfbV correspondent in Iraq, Pater Emmanuel Youkhana in a telephone call with the GfbV in Göttingen on Thursday, Bishop Paulos was found dead near Mossul. He was abducted on 29th February after the celebration of a mass. Three people accompanying him were killed at the time of the attack.
„The criminals had demanded a ransom of 2.5 million dollars and underlined their message of driving the Christians out of the region with absurd demands”, reported the GfbV Near-East correspondent, Kamal Sido. The Chaldaic Catholic church was required to obtain arms for Arab Islamist terrorists and hide them in their churches. The direction was also given that the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq was to be pressed to release terrorists in custody. Finally there was the open threat: If the Chaldaic Catholic church did not provide a suicide bomber the Christians would have to leave the region.
The GfbV describes the expulsion of the Assyro-Chaldaeans from Iraq as „the largest persecution of Christians in the world today”. It is mainly due to murder, abduction and terror attacks of Islamist fanatics on churches, monasteries, Christian schools and community houses that according to the estimates of the human rights organisation already three quarters of the 650,000 Christians in Iraq before the war have been expelled.
In 1987 there were still about 1.4 million. Safety is only to be found in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since however the autonomous federal state can take no more refugees tens of thousands of Christians have had to flee from central and southern Iraq to Jordan and Syria.
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