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By Dale Gavlak,
December 29, 2016
For
Christians in the Middle East looking back on 2016, the picture is grim: with
mounting challenges especially in Iraq and Syria. Thousands of Iraqi Christians
had to flee for their lives after the militants invaded their home in the
Ninevah Plain. Now their people risk extinction.
WASHINGTON
- As Christians in the Middle East look back on 2016, they wonder if there will
be much to celebrate amid mounting challenges, particularly for those displaced
by conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
“As
much as we are pleased that our homelands from which thousands of Christians
were forced to flee from the extremists have been retaken, we are very
concerned about what lies ahead,” Father Emanuel Youkhana told Catholic News
Service by phone.
He
referred to Iraq’s Christian towns of Qaraqosh, Batnayeh and Bartella, recently
regained by the Iraqi military from Islamic State.
The
archimandrite is a member of the Assyrian Church of the East and heads the
Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, CAPNI.
Youkhana
and others have expressed concerns that Iraq’s Christians may once again be
caught in the country’s sectarian violence, this time by Shiite Muslims. If
this happens, it will impede the Christians’ ability to return home.
Iraq’s
majority Shiite population comprises the bulk of the country’s reconstituted
national army, and as it liberates areas from extremist Sunni militants, Iraqi
Christians have seen worrying Shiite slogans scrawled on places and property
that have always been “100 percent Christian,” Youkana noted.
The
Ninevah Plain, a region rich in oil and the breadbasket of Iraq, has drawn
interest from regional and local powers seeking to exert influence there.
Christians are challenged by the widespread devastation Islamic State militants
have wrought to the area that has been their ancestral homeland for the past 14
centuries.
The
trail of death and destruction left by Islamic State was being fully revealed
as the militants were flushed out. There were accounts that some Christians
were tortured and crucified. Among the militants’ threatening words still
visible in red on the wall of a plundered electrical shop: “By God, we will
break your cross.”
“The
volume of destruction carried out by Islamic State militants throughout the
Ninevah Plain is hindering my people from returning to their family properties.
Infrastructure, including drinking water and electricity, has been badly
damaged, and what can we then say about the paramount need for security,”
Youkhana said.
He
urged the international community to help Christians and other religious
minorities to return home after their forced displacement by the Islamic State.
The
militants invaded the Ninevah Plain in the summer of 2014, imposing an
extremist and violent form of Sunni Islam and forcing tens of thousands of
Iraqi Christians to flee for their lives. Many escaped with just the clothes on
their backs, losing their homes, property and their livelihoods.
A
number of displaced Christians venturing back to Qaraqosh to assess the damage
told CNS that they could not live there again unless they get compensation and
guarantees of protection from the international community.
Houses
have been burned, either to create a smokescreen against coalition aircraft
bombing Islamic State in support of Iraqi forces, or apparently out of spite,
while beloved churches have been violently ransacked.
“It’s
worse than we expected,” said teacher Wisam Rafou Poli, trying to exorcise the
presence of the militants who occupied his house by emptying its entire
contents onto the street to be burned.
“I
cried when we entered the house,” his wife Zeena said, comforting their young
daughter, who was mourning her favorite doll, found filthy and ripped.
Syriac
Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan told CNS he
was horrified to see the terrible devastation and what he called “ghost
towns” during a visit to northern Iraq in late November.
He
celebrated the Eucharist “on an improvised small altar” in the incinerated
sanctuary of the vandalized Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh for
the few who could attend the liturgy.
“I
just wanted to strengthen their faith in the redeemer’s altar and cross,
although both were half broken behind us,” the patriarch said. “I reminded them
that we Christians are the descendants of martyrs and confessors, with a long
history dating back to the evangelization of the apostles.”
Patriarch
Younan called for a “stable, law-abiding and strong government” to support the
establishment of an eventual self-administrative province in the area under the
central government in Baghdad.
Meanwhile,
about 5 million Syrians have fled the nearly six-year-old conflict, seeking
refuge mainly in Europe. But the European Union tightened its external borders
this year, overwhelmed by the arrival of more than a million refugees and
migrants in 2015.
Pope
Francis made a dramatic gesture by taking 12 Syrian refugees back to Rome with
him from his visit to Lesbos, Greece, in April to see the conditions and perils
experienced by thousands of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean.
The
Vatican also assisted other Syrian refugees arriving in Rome in mid-June. While
the Vatican is covering the living costs of about 21 refugees, they are being
housed and resettled by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic community
based in Rome.
The
U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that the number of people fleeing war and
persecution have soared four times over the past decade, to 24 people per
minute or more than 65 million people forcibly displaced worldwide.
Franciscan
Father Francesco Patton, the new custos of the Holy Land, who is provincial
minister of the Franciscans in almost all of the Middle East, told CNS in
November Christians in Aleppo, Syria, believe the world is unconcerned about
their situation.
“They
feel often abandoned by the other Christians,” he told CNS. “They feel that
many Christians are not interested in their suffering or what they are doing to
remain Christian there. Many of them have lost everything. The only thing they
haven’t lost is the faith.”
Patton
warned that Aleppo’s Christian population has sharply declined from
250,000-300,000 to 30,000-40,000 during the Syrian civil war.
The
Franciscan friars and other Catholic religious orders and aid agencies have
worked tirelessly to help the local communities with food, electricity, water,
gas, diesel, restoring houses after bombardments, regardless of their religious
background.
Patton
said the Franciscans also try to build the bridges necessary to one day have
lasting peace in the region, and it starts with children.
Still
despite these challenges, the custos said, “there are many, many signs of hope,
but we need eyes to see the signs of hope. If we are blind, we cannot see signs
of hope.”
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