Archbishop: U.N. ignoring plight of Iraqi Christians

Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 26, 2006 at midnight

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Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput says the United Nations is ignoring millions of Iraqi Christians who have been targeted by Islamic extemists for violence and persecution.

"Members of non-Muslim religious minorities continue to suffer a disproprotionate burden of violent attacks and other human rights abuses," Chaput wrote Friday in a Washington Times op-ed piece he co-authored with a fellow member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Chaput and the commissioners went to Turkey last month to meet with delegations from Iraqi’s war-ravaged ethnic churches. They represent a huge part of the 1.5 million Iraqis who have escaped the country since 2003, and among the "tens of thousands" who continue to flee every month "in a slow, silent exodus."

Without any designated military protection and so far ignored by the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees, the Christian groups "have been forced to fend for themselves," Chaput wrote.

He said the refugees "spoke despairingly" of churches being burned, religious leaders threatened with death, and jobs and stores traditionally staffed by Christians shut down by "extremists who say these activities are against Islam."

Chaput said until the United Nations considers their case, displaced Christians are being denied international protections afforded legitimate refugees.

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