State Department Details Report of Sad Plight for Assyrian Christians

Washington (AINA) -- The U.S. State Department has released it's annual International Religious Freedom Report, which details religious freedom issues for all countries of the world.

AINA has excerpted the passages relevant to Assyrians from the reports on Iran, Syria Turkey and Iraq -- the ancestral homeland of Assyrians and where Middle East Assyrians live.

The population of Assyrians in these countries is:

Iraq 800,000
Syria (nationals) 700,000
Syria (refugees from Iraq) 500,000
Iran 50,000
Turkey 24,000
Jordan (refugees from Iraq) 150,000

Since 2004 nearly half of Assyrians in Iraq have fled the country because of religious and political violence directed at them (see here and here), with most settling in Syria and Jordan.

Excerpts from each country's report follow.

Iraq
Reported estimates from Christian leaders of the Christian population in 2003 ranged from 800,000 to 1.4 million. Current population estimates by Christian leaders range from 500,000 to 600,000. Approximately two-thirds of Christians are Chaldeans (an eastern rite of the Catholic Church), nearly one-fifth are Assyrians (Church of the East), and the remainder are Syriacs (Eastern Orthodox), Armenians (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), Anglicans, and other Protestants. Most Assyrian Christians are in the north, and most Syriac Christians are split between Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Ninewa Province. Christian leaders estimate that as much as 50 percent of the country's Christian population lives in Baghdad, and 30 to 40 percent lives in the north, with the largest Christian communities located in and around Mosul, Erbil, Dohuk, and Kirkuk. The Archbishop of the Armenian Orthodox Diocese reported that 15,000 to 16,000 Armenian Christians remained in the country, primarily in the cities of Baghdad, Basrah, Kirkuk, and Mosul. Evangelical Christians reportedly number between 5,000 and 6,000. They can be found in the northern part of the country, as well as in Baghdad, with a very small number residing in Basrah.

There were allegations that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) engaged in discriminatory behavior against religious minorities. Christians and Yezidis living north of Mosul claimed that the KRG confiscated their property without compensation and that it began building settlements on their land. Assyrian Christians alleged that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-dominated judiciary in Ninewa routinely discriminated against non-Muslims and failed to enforce judgments in their favor. There were reports that Yezidis faced restrictions when entering the KRG and had to obtain KRG approval to find jobs in areas within Ninewa Province administered by the KRG or under the security protection of the Peshmerga.

There were also allegations that the KRG exhibited favoritism toward the Christian religious establishment, and it was alleged that on February 17, 2008, KRG authorities arrested and held incommunicado for four days an Assyrian blogger, Johnny Khoshaba Al-Rikany, based on articles he had posted attacking corruption in the church.

On April 26, 2009, in the city of Kirkuk, three Chaldean Christians were shot and killed in their homes and two others were injured. On April 29, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) in Kirkuk received reports that eight suspected members of al-Qa'ida in Iraq had been arrested in connection with the attack. However, the suspects were later released due to lack of evidence, and no additional arrests were made.

On April 2, 2009, according to press reports, three Assyrian Christians were stabbed and killed in their homes in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad. Although the motive is unknown, a local Christian leader indicated that the motivation for the killings was "theft."

On April 1, 2009, a Christian man was found dead in Kirkuk, with his throat slit.

On July 2, 2008, a group calling itself the Battalion of Just Punishment, Jihad Base in Mesopotamia, sent threatening letters to Assyrian churches in Mosul, demanding they not cooperate with Coalition Forces.

In a symbolically significant event, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paulus Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped on February 29, 2008, for failing to pay protection money or "jizya" to Islamic insurgents. The archbishop died while in captivity. Government security forces subsequently arrested one of the kidnappers, and he was sentenced to death.

The security situation in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad improved sufficiently to allow 325 Christian families who had been displaced by sectarian violence to return. Two churches were operating in the neighborhood--one Assyrian Orthodox and one Chaldean--along with a Chaldean seminary. Church leaders reported full attendance at services in these churches throughout the reporting period. Christmas was declared a national holiday, and on December 20, 2008, the Ministry of Interior sponsored a public Christmas event in Baghdad.

Chaldean patriarch Cardinal Delly led Christmas Mass at the Virgin Mary convent church in Baghdad's Karada neighborhood with Ammar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), in attendance.

Syria
The Government restricts full freedom of choice in religious matters. The Government does not recognize the religious status of Muslims who convert to Christianity. The reverse is not true. In the event of a conversion to Christianity, the Government still regards the individual convert as Muslim and still subject to Shari'a (Islamic Law). A Muslim woman cannot marry a Christian man, but a Christian woman can marry a Muslim man. If a Christian woman marries a Muslim man, however, she is not allowed to be buried in a cemetery for Muslims unless she converts to Islam. If a person wants to convert from Christianity to Islam, the law states that the presiding Muslim cleric must inform the prospective convert's diocese.

The largest Christian group is the Greek Orthodox Church, known in the country as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East. Most citizens of Armenian descent belong to the Armenian (Apostolic) Church, which uses an Armenian liturgy. The largest Uniate church in the country is the Greek Catholic Church. Other Uniate groups include the Maronite Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, and the Chaldean Catholic Church, which derives from the Nestorian Church. Protestant Christian denominations include Baptists and Mennonites. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is also present.

All public schools are officially government-run and non-sectarian, although in practice some schools are operated by the Christian and Druze communities. There is mandatory religious instruction in public schools for all religious groups, with government-approved teachers and curriculums. Religious instruction is provided on Islam and Christianity only, and courses are divided into separate classes for Muslim and Christian students. Groups that participate in Islamic courses include Sunni, Shi'a, Alawite, Ismaili, Yezidi, and Druze. Although Arabic is the official language in public schools, the Government permitted the teaching of Armenian, Hebrew, Syriac (Aramaic), and Chaldean in some schools on the premise that they are "liturgical languages." There is no mandatory religious study at the university level.

Iran
By law, religious minorities are not allowed to be elected to a representative body or to hold senior government or military positions, with the exception that 5 of a total 290 seats in the Majles are reserved for religious minorities. Three of these seats are reserved for members of Christian religious groups, including two seats for Armenian Christians and one for Assyrian Christians. There is also one seat to represent Jews and one to represent Zoroastrians. While Sunnis do not have reserved seats in the Majles, they are allowed to serve in the body. Sunni Majles deputies tend to be elected from among the larger Sunni communities. Members of religious minorities are allowed to vote; however, no member of a religious minority, including Sunni Muslims, is eligible to be president.

The Government generally allowed recognized religious minority groups to conduct religious education for their adherents in separate schools, although it restricted this right considerably in some cases. The Ministry of Education, which imposed certain curriculum requirements, supervised these schools. With few exceptions, the directors of such private schools must be Muslim. Attendance at the schools was not mandatory for recognized religious minorities. The Ministry of Education must approve all textbooks used in coursework, including religious texts. Recognized religious minorities could provide religious instruction in non-Persian languages, but such texts required approval by the authorities. This approval requirement sometimes imposed significant translation expenses on minority communities. However, Assyrian Christians reported that their community was permitted to write its own textbooks, which, following government authorization, were then printed at government expense and distributed to the Assyrian community.

In late March 2009, according to domestic human rights groups, a revolutionary court closed the Pentecostal church of Shahr Ara in Tehran, which belongs to Assyrian Christians. According to reports, the stated reason for the closure was the "illegal activities" of converting Muslims to Christianity and "accepting converts" to worship as members of the congregation.

Turkey
The number of Syriac Christians in the southeast was higher before 1990; however, under pressure from government authorities and later under the impact of the war against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), many Syriacs migrated to Istanbul, western and northern Europe, or North and South America. Over the last several years, small numbers of Syriacs returned from overseas to the southeast, mostly from Europe. In most cases, older family members returned while younger ones remained abroad.

Religious minorities are exempted legally from compulsory religious and moral instruction in primary and secondary schools. The Government claimed that the compulsory instruction covers the range of world religions, but religious minorities asserted that the courses reflect Hanafi Sunni Islamic doctrine and that antimissionary rhetoric remained in compulsory school textbooks. A few religious minorities, such as Protestants and Syriac Orthodox, faced difficulty obtaining exemptions, particularly if their identification cards did not list a religion other than Islam.

Restoration or construction may be carried out on buildings and monuments considered "ancient" only with authorization of the regional board on the protection of cultural and national wealth. Bureaucratic procedures and considerations relating to historic preservation in the past impeded repairs to religious facilities, especially in the case of Syriac and Armenian Orthodox properties.

In August 2008 three muhtars (the lowest level of nonpartisan elected official with limited authority) in Midyat filed a criminal complaint with a local prosecutor against the Syriac Mor Gabriel Monastery, alleging it illegally appropriated territory by building a wall. On May 22, 2009, a local court ruled in favor of the monastery regarding the claims of three local villages. The Department of Forestry and Department of Treasury filed separate cases, accusing the monastery of occupying government-owned forest land and Treasury Department land. Official photographs from the 1950s documented the provincial administrative board's approval of the monastery's borders. The monastery does not have legal status and is represented by a foundation established during the Ottoman Empire. The five local court cases related to forest lands and Treasury Department lands continued at the end of the reporting period (Click here for complete coverage of the St. Gabriel Monastery case).

Syriac residents of Bardakci village who fled in the mid-1980s found upon their return after 2005 that one of the village's two Syriac churches had been converted into a mosque without the Syriac community having been consulted. By mid-2009 construction of a new mosque was underway, and local government authorities assured Syriac leaders that as soon as the new mosque was completed, the converted church would be returned to the Syriac community as a place of worship. Some returning Syriacs claimed that government authorities reclassified properties while the Syriacs were out of the country in ways that caused them to lose some of their land.

In November 2008 a court convicted four suspects, including one village guard, to a total of 60 years' imprisonment for the November 2007 kidnapping of Syriac priest Edip Daniel Savci in Midyat. Three other suspects were acquitted.