ICC Note: With the on-going violence in Iraq, many Christians have already fled the country and many others are looking to do that as well. The population has shrunk to just a fraction of the 1.5 million Christians who were living in the country before 2003. Many of those who remain have been forced to live as refugees, driven from their homes more than a year ago. For many of the traditional Christian communities who have called Iraq home for nearly 2,000 years, the people are doubtful that any future remains for them in Iraq.
10/20/2015 Iraq (Christian Post) – Displaced Iraq Christians who fled from Islamic State militants in Mosul, pray at a school acting as a refugee camp in Erbil September 6, 2014.
The Christian population in Iraq is in danger of being extinct in about five years, a recent report from an international Catholic charity organization says.
At present, there are only around 300,000 Christians left in Iraq from over a million in 2002. The Aid to the Church in Need released a new report saying Iraq’s Christian population faces extinction in five years, especially after 120,000 of them are being forced to convert to Islam or die, according to Rome Reports.
If the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not stopped, the Christian population in Iraq could be eradicated by the year 2020. Those in Syria also face serious threat to their lives, Sputnik News reports.
In the report titled “Persecuted and Forgotten,” Aid to the Church in Need documents the persecution of Christians in Iraq from 2013 up to the present. The UK-based charity enumerates 10 countries in which Christians suffer the worst persecution and Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, and Syria topped the list. The other countries in the list include China, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and North Korea, the report details.
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