Iraqi Christians “are fleeing” from their country and many of them belong to the “productive segment” or the “most educated” sectors of the population (also) due to the “divisions” between the Churches, so far unable to implement strong and unitary policies and initiatives to give them a future.
The j’accuse was launched by the Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Card. Louis Raphael Sako, in a long message to the faithful in Iraq and around the world published on the patriarchate website and sent to AsiaNews for information.
From the temporary seat of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the cardinal has withdrawn until the controversy linked to the presidential decree which is a source of conflict and further division is resolved, he renews the appeal for a common commitment and evokes the creation of a “crisis unit”.
In Iraq, observes the Chaldean primate, “there is no strategy, security or economic stability”, there is a lack of “sovereignty” and there is a “double” application of the concepts of democracy, freedom, constitution, law and citizenship by those who should be at the service of the country and its inhabitants.
In this way the institutions have been “weakened” and there has been a “decline” in morals and values, services, healthcare and education have worsened, as well as “widespread corruption” and “growing unemployment” combined to a returning illiteracy.
In this context, the Christian component, already on the margins, has become even more fragile and has been the subject of kidnappings, killings that began in 2003 with the US invasion and culminated in the years of domination of the Islamic State (ISIS), with the great escape from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.