Peaceful co-existence only possible with separation of state and religion

Representatives of the ethnic and religious minorities at a two-day conference of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) last weekend in Frankfurt am Main called for a fundamental change in the Iraqi Constitution. The different ethnic groups can only live in a fair and peaceful way alongside one another if state and religion are separated in the Constitution and religious freedom is guaranteed, says the resolution, which was passed unanimously. This contained the requirement that the people in the regions where the administration is controversial should be able to decide for themselves whether their regions should be under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi federal province of Kurdistan with the capital of Arbil or the central government in Baghdad.

The conference was attended by representatives from Baghdad and Arbil of the Christians (Chaldaic-Assyro-Aramaeans), Turkmen, Yezidi, Shabak, Armenians, Feili Kurds and Mandaeans and also experts from Germany. Since the Kurds in northern Iraq make up the great majority of the population they sent only observers to the conference.

The conference found that after the fall of the dictator Saddam Hussein the situation of the ethnic and religious minorities had in fact deteriorated. The terror wrought by Islamist fanatics from neighbouring countries has prevented the building-up of a democratic, pluralist and federal Iraq and above all caused floods of refugees from central and southern Iraq to the north or to neighbouring countries.

Politics regarding the nationalities and minorities is exemplary in the autonomous federal state of Kurdistan, where the way in which all the ethnic groups and religious communities work and live together is improving all the time. However help from outside is urgently needed to enable the refugees to be integrated. All the refugees who reach European countries must be accepted without being troubled by red tape.

Outside the mainstream of the conference representatives agreed on founding a working party in Iraq to support the smaller ethnic and religious minorities. Its task is with the support of the GfbV to present their needs to the outside world. There are still in Iraq about 600,000 Christians, about 400,000 Turkmen, 550,000 Yezidi, 70,000 Shabak, 500,000 Feili Kurds, about 18,000 Armenians and less than 5,000 Mandaeans.