Once home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, Iraq today is in danger of losing Christianity completely. The Islamic State group forced thousands of Christians to flee after it stormed through the Nineveh Plains in 2014. Some have now returned, following IS’s military defeat. But even with IS gone, in many areas of Iraq daily life is governed by Sharia (Islamic law) and Muslims are forbidden to leave Islam.
‘It’s time to be real: what happens in Iraq is ethnic cleansing’ – UK analyst
What Iraq’s Christians want from the West is to say the plain truth: that there is ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region and it is ongoing, Dr Tim Stanley told a meeting at the UK’s parliament last Tuesday, 9 July. The historian and columnist, working for UK daily newspaper […]
Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear
The Islamic State’s three-year occupation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its surrounding villages ended nearly two years ago, yet the city and its diminished number of Christian residents remain vulnerable. Last month the Iraqi government announced it would arm residents of 50 villages around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, […]
Iraqi Christians hesitate to return to Bartella
Two years after Islamic State was forced out of the northern Iraqi town of Bartella, Christians hesitate to return, reports the Associated Press. Fewer than a third of the 3,800 Christian families have come back to the town in the Nineveh Plains they once shared with the Shabak, a mostly […]
Iraq: UN team starts probe into IS war crimes
One of the world’s most influential Muslim clerics has told a UN team that an investigation into “heinous crimes” committed against Christian and other Iraqi minorities was welcome and urgent, reports Agenzia Fides The team, known as UNITAD, started its work formally this month following a UN resolution in September 2017. […]
Iraqi Christian family ordered to leave IDP camp but have nowhere to go
The last Christian family remaining in an IDP camp north of Erbil have turned to the local government and aid organisations as they have been asked to leave the camp but have nowhere to go, Kurdish news website Rudaw reports. Sena Behnam and her husband said they have to stay […]
Iraq: Christian school’s reopening a ‘victory over extremism’
The reopening of the oldest Christian school in Mosul – a northern Iraqi city once controlled by IS – has been hailed as a “victory over terrorism and extremism”. The Shimon Safa Elementary School was closed for four years, but has welcomed 400 students – aged between six and 12 […]
Iraq: More than 200 mass graves with thousands of bodies discovered
More than 200 mass graves containing the remains of thousands of people killed by Islamic State have been discovered in northern and western Iraq, according to a UN report released on Tuesday, 5 November. The report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and UN Human Rights Office documents […]
‘If this is not genocide, then what is?’ asks Iraqi archbishop
One more wave of persecution and Christianity could be erased from Iraq, a church leader has warned. Habib Nafali, Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Basra, said the killing and displacement of Iraq’s Christians and “systematic violence” towards them had been intended to force them out of Iraq. “If this is not […]
Iraqi Christian boy Noeh under his own roof again
Around 40,000 Christians who escaped from the 2014 attacks of Islamic State in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains have returned to their homes but are in a “very hard situation”, according to the Pope’s nuncio in Iraq: “There is still much to be done, much to rebuild. The houses were damaged, burned […]
IS sex slave recalls having to watch torture of other women
One of the Christian women who was captured, trafficked and used as a sex slave by ISIS has told The European Post she was forced to watch public executions and the torture of other women. “They did evil things to us, they were beating us every day, sexual assaults, and trading us as […]