Arab Spring promoting bloodshed says Iraq Christian leader

Arab Spring promoting bloodshed: Iraq Christian leader
ICC Note: Louis Sako, the newly appointed patriarch of Iraq’s largest Christian community, said on Saturday that the Arab Spring had been hijacked and has only promoted tension and bloodshed, The Associated Press reports. Christians in Iraq have not been the only ones who have suffered severe persecution in recent years. In Egypt, more than 80 Christians have been killed and several churches have been destroyed following the country’s uprising. And in Syria, Christians are fleeing Islamist rebel-controlled cities in the thousands in fear for their lives. The widely acclaimed Arab Spring, which hoped to instill democratic change and greater freedoms throughout the Arab world, has instead given birth to a radical agenda that seeks to Islamize the Middle East. 
2/09/2013 Middle East (France 24) –The newly appointed patriarch of Iraq’s largest Christian community said on Saturday that the Arab Spring had been hijacked by narrow interests and had promoted tension and bloodshed.
Asked about the impacts on Christians of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East that eventually led to the ouster of strongmen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya and the conflict in Syria, the head of the Chaldean Church Louis Sako said the changes had initially signalled hope.
“But unfortunately, it went in a different direction, and was taken over by a narrow faction,” Sako told AFP in an interview.
“We are watching the situation in the Arab Spring countries. Where is the spring? There are fights, there is tension, and there is blood and corruption.”
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According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, many thousands fled after 44 worshippers and two priests were killed in an attack on a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad on October 31, 2010, an atrocity claimed by Al-Qaeda.
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