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Sweden Must Stop Deporting Iraqi Christians
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Stockholm (AINA) -- Expressen, a Swedish tabloid, and all Swedish Christian newspapers are demanding the Swedish government and the Migration authorities take the persecution of Assyrians in Iraq seriously. They are demanding a stop on all deportations of Christians to Iraq and and that the Swedish government works for protection of Assyrian and other Christians. A petition has been signed by editors, reporters, Church leaders and politicians. The Assyrian journalist Nuri Kino is one of them. He has written the following editorial, which was published in a Swedish the newspaper.


"They stormed the church, they are terrorists, they are going to kill everyone, you have to report this," a Christian man who had been forcibly departed from Sweden screamed at me on a cellular phone from Baghdad just after five o'clock on Sunday. I phoned Younadam Khana, chairman of the Assyrian Democratic Movement as well as being an Iraqi Christian parliamentarian. He replied and began by apologizing because he had been speaking to someone else. With my ear glued to the phone I heard how the police were trying to block the way to the church. I made several other phone calls and heard how shots were being fired. I called Khana again, he was stressed, the phone was calling all the time, I wanted to hang up but he asked me to remain on the line. He thought it was important to report to the outside world so they knew what had happened. By evening I saw the horrible pictures of the massacre in the church.

I skino matyo lu garmo -- this is a saying in Jesus' mother tongue. Word for word it means that 'the knife had reached the bone.' My cup now runneth over! Nadja, Samer, Taher, Ninos, Bassamn Mona, the names are many. They are all in hiding in Sweden. They face multiple threats, the Swedish police are hunting them using every resource to put handcuffs on them and force them on a chartered prison plane back to Baghdad. In Iraq murder patrols are waiting to assassinate them. They are on the death rolls of the Islamic fundamentalists. They are twice and thrice persecuted. They will be murdered because they are Christians. Because they were barbers, because they once owned wine shops or because they once worked for the Americans. Yesterday I had three of them for dinner. They survive using their meager resources; wages for Iraqis in hiding are down to twenty kronor per hour (2.8 USD). They work ten to fifteen hours a day and try to survive on under five thousand kronor ($725) per month. Rent for a fugitive is about three thousand kronor for a bed to sleep in. But they accept this, It is better than meeting the executioner in Baghdad.

For several years I have anguished over the war in Iraq in general and of the religious and ethnic persecution in particular. Despite that I've made radio and television documentaries, written a book reporting the situation, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles I have been described as paranoid. Sometimes I think that I've become insane. Mentally ill from faulty decisions, lies, deceit and duplicity --- all this while I have hidden Iraqi refugees from the Swedish police. Had I been in Baghdad or Mosul, I would have done the same as my friends there; I would have hidden defenseless Christians from Islamic fundamentalists. Now that Swedish newspapers are demanding a stop to the deportations, they are also engaged in this struggle. Are all of us insane?

I skino matyo lu garmo, Billström. Stop hiding behind excuses about your equitable system for asylum seekers, or that the Iraqi government can protect your deportees. You know that you are lying through your teeth on both counts. We will not allow that one more will be sent back to death. And we will not stop demanding protection in Iraq, we will make you and other ministers open your eyes and start to see the cleansing.

Translated from Swedish by David Kushner.



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