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The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) gave a serious warning on Monday of the extinction of the small religious community of the Mandaeans in Iraq.
„Islamist terrorists continue to put their dreadful threats against people of other faiths into practice as brutally as on the 2nd February in Kut in the Alaza region, some 160 km south-west of Baghdad. There ten members of a Mandaic family were killed by a rocket aimed at their house and one Mandaean was seriously injured”, reported workers of the GfbV Kurdistan/Iraq Section by telephone from Arbil. The family had received several threats from Islamists.
This was confirmed the associations of Mandaeans in Australia.
„The effect of this dreadful attack against such a small religious community as the Mandaeans is devastating”, said the GfbV Near-east correspondent, Kamal Sido, in Göttingen. This could mean the final exodus of the last members of this old religious community, of whom there remain according to the latest estimates at most 5000. In 2003 there were still about 30,000 Mandaeans living in Iraq. Some 25,000 Mandaeans have already fled to neighbouring countries to escape from murder, abduction and rape. There are shocking examples of even children and teenagers being attacked.
The Mandaeans, who number not more than 60,000 members, trace their origin back to John the Baptist and use their original mother tongue, East Aramaic, as the language of their liturgy. In Iraq they are treated as outlaws. The GfbV has asked the German, the Swedish and Australian governments to take up contingents of this ethnic refugee group to save the Mandaeans from Iraq. In Sweden and Australia there are already large groups of exiles. In Germany there are about 1,000 Mandaeans.
According to information received from the GfbV Kurdistan/Iraq Section the following people were killed:
Najat Abdul Gataa (49), Inas Safa Gataa (26), Mahdi Salah Naeem (23),
Husam Salah Naeem (19); Yahya Salah Naeem (17), Anhar Mahaned Abdul
Gataa (22), Nauha Salah Naeem (16), Bassma Moayed Abdul Gatta (6),
Lamya Maayed Abdul Gatta (5) and a child of 18 months. The 33-year old Maayed Abdul Gatta, father of some of the killed children, was severely injured.
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