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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (14187)	1/23/2007 6:47:26 AM
From: Crimson Ghost	Respond to of 22250

Iraqi Christians may never return by Bill Bowder Venturing out: Iraqi Christians pray during a Christmas mass in a church north-east of Baghdad. A small number attended church services, but most stayed at home for fear of attack AP/EMPICS THOUSANDS of Iraqi Christians have sought refuge in Damascus and may never return to Iraq, a Christian campaigning charity, the Barnabas Fund, warned this week. The United Nations has launched a campaign to raise money for Iraqi refugees, mostly Sunni and Shia Muslims, but the Barnabas Fund said that Christian refugees could be forgotten. The Iraqi Christian population had dropped to about 500,000, a third of its level of 20 years ago. An estimated 350,000 Christians had fled since 2003, it said. Speaking to the Church Times in London, Dr Dony George, the former director of the Baghdad Museum, said that British Churches and the British Government should do more to help Christians. He had fled with his family to Damascus after his son’s life was threatened. Persecution against him and other Christians had steadily increased, triggered in September by Pope Benedict’s remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. The government had daily reduced his ability to carry out his work at the Museum, and he had become increasingly cautious, changing cars and routes to work every day, he said. The government had made it clear that his post was too important to be held by a Christian, and his resignation had been accepted immediately. “They were waiting for this,” he said. When a note was thrown into his driveway, accusing his son of cursing Islam and teasing Islamic women students, he decided it was time that his family should leave. “I wrote a letter of apology, and enclosed $1000. I said to them: ‘I am sure my son never did what you say.’” But he decided to go. “I just turned the key on my flat and left everything as it was,” he said. He advised other Christians to do the same. Hundreds of Christian families were in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; others had travelled to Europe and America. “All of them are longing to go back, but it is not safe,” he said. “My advice is to get out, and then when the time comes they can go back. The alternative is that they will die.” Damascus was now full of Iraqi Christians. “Everywhere I go, I see faces from Dora [in Baghdad]. Even my kids have their same friends from home. They are all there.” But not every Christian could afford to leave, or had friends who could help. “I am well-known. But what of all the other ordinary people, what can they do?” he asked. The British and American authorities did not seem to be making special concessions for Christians. “I haven’t heard of any effort by the British Government to help people emigrate. I have heard nothing of the Churches in the UK who are helping. It is very hard to hear any positive word from Britain or the United States,” he said. Jerusalem message On Friday, after President Bush’s call for a troop “surge” in Iraq, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, said that the path for peace in the Middle East lay through Jerusalem, not Baghdad.