Refugee children from Qaraqosh. Photo: Rudaw
ishtartv.com - fides.org
Wednesday,
3 October 2018
In
Sulaymaniyya, in Iraqi Kurdistan, there are currently no tensions, but the
refugee emergency, caused by the war against ISIS and the internal instability
of Iraq, has not ended.
This
is what Fr. Jens Petzold, a religious of Mar Musa (the community founded by
Jesuit father Paolo Dall'Oglio), who has been in Kurdistan for years, says in
an interview with Agenzia Fides. "For three years - observes Father Jens -
we have hosted Christian refugees who have fled before the advance of the
militiamen of the Islamic State in our community in Sulaymaniyya. In the most
critical period, 250 men, women and children were sleeping, eating and living
with us.
An
emergency we responded to thanks to international aid and our personal
commitment. In September, the last group of refugees left our community and
returned home. Most of them came from Qaraqosh".
Kurdistan has welcomed 1,700,000 displaced people and refugees. In the area of
Sulaymaniyya alone there were 200 thousand (including five thousand
Christians). "The emergency is not over", continues Father Jens.
"Many Sunni Muslims cannot and do not want to return to their homeland for
fear of Shiite reprisals. Then we also have numerous Syrian refugees (mostly
Kurds) who do not want to return home, because they fear insecurity".
Faced with this emergency, Father Jens and the many volunteers are engaged in
various projects. The most important is the language school (Kurdish, English
and Arabic) including theatrical activities. "We are thinking - explains
the religious - of creating a popular school. In addition to languages, we
would like to include other subjects: history, philosophy, literature.
We
want to offer these activities to everyone: Kurds, refugees. We make no
distinction between faith or ethnicity". Father Jens and the volunteers
also work in Kanakawa, a Yazidi village not far from Sulaymaniyya, where they
teach language and literacy courses.
"We - the religious concludes - turn to young people, we must help them
learn useful skills. The aim is to create a more structured economy".
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