Hand-over of 7,000 signatures

Don’t wait for EU decision! Germany must grant refuge to Christians from Iraq in need

With the urgent call to wait no longer for a decision from the EU the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) will hand in to the government this coming Tuesday in Berlin an appeal with 7,000 signatures for the admission to Germany of Iraqi Christians. The Parliamentary Government Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, Peter Altmaier, will receive it. When it is handed over the Assyro-Chaldean Pater Emanuel Youkhana, who returned from Iraq on Monday, and a refugee family from Kirkuk will be reporting on the desperate situation of the Christians. Hundreds of thousands of them have had to flee from the terror directed at them by Islamist terrorists. In neighbouring Jordan and Syria tens of thousands of Christian refugees are eking out a miserable existence.

The suggestion of the Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, that the EU countries should take up contingents of Christian Iraq refugees has been rejected by some of his colleagues. The condition now made by Schäuble is that the decision be a joint one. The ministers of the interior will be discussing this again in September.

„No one can appeal to Christian and western traditions without taking action in view of the mass exodus of the last 350,000 Christians from Iraq and the destruction of the 2000-year tradition and culture”, said the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. „For this reason the German government must grant immediate refuge to the persecuted Assyro-Chaldeans. Any delay can cost human lives.” It would be wrong then to make these aid measures for the Christians of Iraq and the minority of the Mandeans dependent on some obscure EU timetables.

The GfbV has since 2003 documented in a „Chronicle of Horror” the dreadful crimes against the New Aramaic-speaking Christians of Iraq, most of whom call themselves Assyro-Chaldeans. Christians in Iraq have been murdered, crucified, beheaded, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, kidnapped or have simply disappeared without a trace. 41 of their churches have been destroyed and their schools, businesses and institutions have been bombed. The GfbV

Near-East consultant, Kamal Sido, had to complete the chronicle on 11th August 2008 with the entry: „The young Christian Sizar Anwar Hurmoz was murdered today in Baghdad by unknown persons.”

We cordially invite you after the handing over of the signatures to a meeting with the press on Tuesday, 19th August 2008 at 14.00 at the Berlin office of the GfbV, Am Festungsgraben 1, 10117 Berlin (Büro 213).