The Disappearing Christians of Iraq
By Kate Seelye
7/23/2010 Iraq (PBS) – In a church in the Iraqi village of Qaraqosh, a priest prepares for a communal baptism. With a splash of water, he welcomes these infants into the Christian faith.
It's a challenging time for Iraq's Christians. Since the 2003 American invasion, the Christian community has been threatened and persecuted. Everyone is a target, including Father Mazen Ishou Mitoka. His church in the city of Mosul has been bombed three times. He himself was kidnapped and held for nine days. But the real horror took place last February when his parents responded to a knock at their Mosul home.
FATHER MAZEN ISHOU MITOKA: My father opened the door and saw three armed people. They entered the house and my brother tried to resist them but he had no weapons. We don't keep weapons at home.
SEELYE: The intruders asked for an identity card to confirm that the family was Christian. They then shot and killed the priest's father and two brothers. Father Mazin says the killings make no sense to him.
MITOKA: Are they political or sectarian? Is this part of some plan to get rid of the Christians? There is always a question mark. Nobody claims the assassinations.
SEELYE: Iraq's Christians are one of the world's oldest Christian communities. Most belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Others are Assyrian, affiliated with the Church of the East, or Syriac Orthodox. While they all speak Arabic, their native tongue is Aramaic, the language of Christ. At the time of Saddam's overthrow, there were estimated to be up to one million Christians in Iraq. Today their numbers have diminished by more than a third as Christians have fled a wave of violence, unleashed by the US invasion.
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