Kamp for land i Sørvest Asia

Nå kan arabere og kurdere endelig få bo alene i Irak – og i stort sett hele Sørvest Asia og Antaolia. Alle som klager på at alle de gruppene som opprinnelig holdt til der, og som dannet verdens første sivilisasjoner og det grunnlaget vi ennå bygger på, enten har blitt drept eller jaget, blir kalt orientalister.

Mye hat retter seg mot Israel, og med rette, men få viser noe som helst sympati med Sørvest Asias minoriteter. Hvorfor? Hverken venstresiden eller høyresiden synes å bry seg, noe som skyldes at ingen av dem har noe å tjene på å støtte disse folkene som nå har blitt til ørsmå minoriteter. Den irakiske urbefolkningen har ikke mer noe å si , men blir jaget og drept. Og det samme kan sies om armenerne og de greske minoritetene som ennå er igjen i Tyrkia, et land som opprinnelig var bebodd av mange ulike folk, men hvor av kun armenere og grekere, som har blitt tvangsflyttet til Hellas, ennå eksisterer.

Araberne kom fra sørvest (Arabia), kurderne fra sørøst (Iran), og i tillegg kom tyrkere, hunere og mongolere. Ikke kun blir den opprinnelige befolkningen forfulgt og drept, men all deres kultur blir rasert og ødelagt. Og hvorfor? Jo, på grunn av land – både tyrkere, arabere og kurdere kjemper for mer land under sin besittelse – og gjør ALT for at dette skal skje.

Vestens krig mot denne regionen har ikke hjulpet, og var heller ikke ment å hjelpe. Målet var geostrategisk kontroll, olje osv. I tillegg kommer at Vesten har Tyrkia og Israel som regionens hovedallierte og benytter seg av kurderne for å destabilisere regionen slik at de kan få det som de vil. Kurdiske militser blir støttet av Israel, et land som i seg selv utgjør en trussel mot den armenske befolkningen i Jerusalem ettersom landet gjør tilværelsen umulig for dem gjennom en rekke statlige inngrep. De har tydeligvis lært av Tyrkia, som gjorde det samme mot sin kristne befolkning. Men dette bør ikke gi noen rett til å angripe uskyldige minoriteter som kun forsøker, nærmest som martyrer, å overleve.

Armenias historie og hurrierne

Armensk kulturhistorie og duduk

Et intervju:

From the time of Jesus, there have been Christians in what is now Iraq. The Christian community took root there after the Apostle Thomas headed east in the year 35.

But now, after nearly 2,000 years, Iraqi Christians are being hunted, murdered and forced to flee — persecuted on a biblical scale in Iraq’s religious civil war. You’d have to be mad to hold a Christian service in Iraq today, but if you must, then the vicar of Baghdad is your man. He’s the Reverend Canon Andrew White, an Anglican chaplain who suffers from multiple sclerosis and from a fanatical determination to save the last Iraqi Christians from the purge.

White invited 60 Minutes cameras and correspondent Scott Pelley to an underground Baghdad church service for what’s left of his congregation. White’s parishioners are risking their lives to celebrate their faith.

«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.»

Many Iraqi Christians’ churches are destroyed or abandoned. The congregation is smuggled in and out of this secret sanctuary. Even letting 60 Minutes come to the service was a terrible risk. White is among the last Christian ministers here, a savior with crosses to bear. Larger than life, stricken with MS, and by his own reckoning, driven a little bit mad.

He was first sent to Baghdad by the Archbishop of Canterbury nine years ago, well before the Christian persecution.

«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.»

«Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years,» Pelley remarked.

«Yes,» White said.

«And it’s now the worst it has ever been,» Pelley replied.

To understand the history of Iraqi Christianity, start with the Last Supper. One saint to the right of Jesus is the Apostle Thomas, who took the gospel and headed east after the death of Christ.

In modern times, under Saddam, Christians were treated much the same as Muslims; Saddam’s right hand man, Tariq Aziz, was Christian.

Before the war, it’s estimated there were about a million Christians in Iraq. They were a small minority, but free to worship, free to build churches, and free to speak the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic. But, after the invasion, Muslim militants launched a war on each other and the cross.

On Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004, five churches were bombed. The Iraqi Christian community, which had survived invasions by Mongols and Turks, was driven out under American occupation. No one can be sure, but White estimates most of Iraq’s Christians have fled or been killed. Those still here are too old, too ill or too poor to run.

«Why are you feeding them all?» Pelley asked.

«Because, this is the only decent meal they’ll have in the week,» White explained. «They can’t afford food. So we’re just moving from every other week to every week because they’ve got nothing.»

Nothing for many, not even their families. The 60 Minutes team was confronted with one of many stories of depravity as the congregation left.

Armenia:

Hva har kurderne nord for den tyrkiske grensa å gjøre?

Dette er okkupert og kolonisert land.

Før:

(Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia og Assyria)

I dag:

Ingen pokal å hente

De kristne i Irak trenger deg nå!

Vis din støtte for krigens ofre i Sørvest Asia!