Lawmaker blasts asylum offers for Iraqi Christians
ICC Note:
“A Christian lawmaker called on Iraq’s government Tuesday to better protect its dwindling Christian community, lambasting the nations that have offered asylum to the minority as meddling in Iraq’s problems,” AP reports.
By Hamid Ahmed
11/23/2010 Iraq (AP) – A Christian lawmaker called on Iraq’s government Tuesday to better protect its dwindling Christian community, lambasting the nations that have offered asylum to the minority as meddling in Iraq’s problems.
The comments by lawmaker Younadem Kana, from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, come after a spate of violent attacks on Iraqi Christians – including a Catholic church attack last month that killed 68 people.
Earlier this week, two Christian brothers in Kana’s hometown were fatally shot by unknown gunmen who raided their auto mechanic shop.
Officials in France and Germany have offered asylum to Iraq’s Christians, an estimated 1 million of whom have already left their homeland since 2003.
More than a third of the 53,700 Iraqis who have been given asylum to the U.S. since 2007 are Christian, according to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, even though they only make up an estimated 5 percent of the population.
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