Obliteration of the Christian community in Iraq Under US Occupation In Last 6 Months

[kpete]

Missing: A Million Iraqi Christians
By: Scarecrow Monday December 3, 2007 5:00 am

CBS' 60 Minutes had a shocking story last night on the almost total obliteration of the Christian community in Iraq, all of it happening under the US occupation. And no one seemed more shocked than the CBS reporter, Scott Pelley, who apparently did not know that a brutally thorough sectarian cleansing has been going on under our watch. And the worst of it apparently happened in the last six months.

Christians have been in the area now known as Iraq for almost two thousand years, and by 2000, their numbers had grown to over 1 million. Part of the reason for that, it seems, is that Saddam Hussein's regime, as brutal and murderous as it was towards those who challenged his rule, remained somewhat tolerant of Christians in a land otherwise dominated by different Islamic sects. There were hundreds of Christian churches in and around Baghdad, and they operated in the open.

The US occupation and overthrow of Saddam changed that. Extremist Sunni and Shia militia began their sectarian cleansing, and it seems the only thing they agreed on was that neither wanted the Christians in their religiously segregated neighborhoods. Christians were intimidated, threatened, kidnapped and forced to leave or be killed. According to 60 Minutes, the few Christians remaining in Iraq live in fear and worship only in secret underground places, unable to attend their now bombed or boarded-up churches. Most Iraqi Christians are either dead, refugees in other countries, or in hiding.

Pelley followed the last remaining Anglican chaplain, Reverend Canon Andrew White to a secret undergound service:


"The room is full of children, it’s full of women, but I don’t see the men. Where are they?" Pelley remarked.

"They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped. Some are killed. In the last six months things have got particularly bad for the Christians. Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed," White explained. "All dead. But we never got their bodies back. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here but it's not easy to get the bodies."

Pelley seemed shocked and genuinely surprised when the Reverend told him how bad things have been recently:


"You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?" Pelley asked.

"The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.

"There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then," he told Pelley. "Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now."

more at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/60minutes/main3553612.shtml
and:
http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/03/christmas-in-iraq/#more-13314

[Land Shark]

1. Obliteration of the Christian community, and more. Terrible news. nt

[pberq]

2. Thanks to the Bush administration for "liberating" these Iraqi Christians

[Shallah Kali]

3. Iraq population est. 24+ million (cia) so that means roughly 1 in 24 Iraqis *WERE* Christian

I remember how the fundamentalists and evangelical Christian groups were drooling at the thought of converting the iraqi people once war paved the way. They were too ignorant to know that Christians have been there from the beginning and that they were making 'their' kind prime targets for retribution by proxy.

[Kansas Wyatt]

4. So for the Iraqi Christians, the world isn't better off without Saddam.

:yoiks: