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.
It is with shock that the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) registered that the EU countries do not intend to take any Christian refugees for the moment. „To postpone this topic to the next meeting in June may be convenient, but in the light of the depressing situation of the Iraqi Christians it is cynical and inhuman”, criticised the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch, on Friday the decision of the EU ministers of the interior who had met in Luxemburg. The German minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, tried to bring all EU countries to state that they would take Christian Iraq refugees.
The Gfbv appealed once more to the German government and the political parties not to follow the „mistaken decision” of the EU and to grant asylum to a contingent of at least 30,000 Christians from Iraq. A rapid integration of members of the Assyro-Chaldaic religious community is clearly indicated by the fact that precisely the Iraqi Christians are for the most part highly trained. There are many specialists among them.
The GfbV was the first institution in Germany to warn in 2004 of a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq and to call on Germany to take a contingent of these refugees. For the members of this religious community have been subjected to the terror of Islamist fanatics since 2003, as has been shown in a detailed „Chronicle of Violence” against Christians and Christian institutions.
The human rights organisation sees no realistic perspective for the Assyro-Chaldaeans in the Arab-Sunni dominated parts of the country. „If the churches are blown up, nuns raped, priests and bishops abducted and murdered, a mass exodus is the clear result”, fears Zülch. In large parts of southern and central Iraq there are hardly any Christians left. The only ones to remain are the sick and the elderly. 120,000 Christians have so far sought refuge in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north of the country, where Christian and Kurdish militia offer protection in the Nineveh plain to the immediate south. There is no
longer any room for more refugees. Before the war the Christian population numbered some 650,000.
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