Iraq: Christians afraid to stay, afraid to leave

Archbishop Bashar Warda

A leading Iraqi bishop has described how Christians in Iraq believe "there is no future" for them there but are afraid to flee abroad because of political uncertainty and crisis in neighbouring countries.

Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, in the Kurdish north of Iraq, described the people's shock after father of four Arakan Yacob, an Orthodox Christian, was shot dead last Tuesday, 31 May in the nearby city of Mosul.

Mr Yacob's killing is the latest in a series of attacks. According to Archbishop Warda, since 2002 more than 570 Christians have been killed in religiously and politically motivated violence.

Archbishop Warda told Aid to the Church in Need that since Mr Yacob's death a number of the faithful had said they wanted to emigrate. But he said emigration was difficult because of political crisis and uncertainty in neighbouring Syria and Turkey.

Both countries have already provided sanctuary to many thousands of Christians who fled persecution in the years since 2003, when religious violence suddenly escalated after the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Speaking from Erbil, Archbishop Warda said: "The latest murder adds to the pessimistic view that there is no future. "No matter how you try to convince people things are getting better they say look at these things that are happening."

Describing renewed talk of emigration among Iraqi Christians, he went on: "Even the situation in neighbouring Turkey is not that good and with what's going on in Syria at the moment a family thinking of emigration has limited choices." But he refused to be downcast. He said: "The message of hope is always there. Life should go on - that's the message."

Archbishop Warda has, nonetheless, made no secret of his people's suffering. During a visit to the UK and Ireland in March to launch Aid to the Church in Need's Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith, he provided statistics showing that since the 1980s Christians in Iraq had plummeted from up to 1.4 million to as low as 150,000.

Amid reports of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing the country, he went on to state that between 2006 and 2010, 17 Iraqi priests and two Iraqi bishops had been abducted and were either beaten or tortured by their kidnappers. Of those, one bishop, four priests and three sub-deacons were killed.

With no sign of an end to the violence, it has now emerged that Mr Yacob, the Mosul Christian who died this week, had been the target of two previous kidnapping attempts.
His death came three weeks after the body of kidnap victim Ashur Yacob Issa, 29, was discovered on 16th May. Mr Issa's family said they were unable to pay the £61,500 ransom demanded by his kidnappers.

Aid to the Church in Need has prioritised help for Iraq in line with a 2007 directive from Pope Benedict XVI to help the Church in the Middle East where he said "it is threatened in its very existence".

The charity has provided emergency aid for refugees in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, food parcels for displaced Christians in northern Iraq, Mass stipends for poor and oppressed priests, support for Sisters and help for seminarians displaced to the north of the country.

Thanking Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Warda said: "It is reassuring to know that people are praying for us."