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Iraqis unite to restore minority
representation Law
8.10.2008
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October 8, 2008
BAGHDAD, —
The protest was small but determined. About 75
Christians and others gathered at a church here on
Monday to demand that the Iraqi Parliament reinstate
a section of an earlier version of the provincial
elections law that ensured political representation
for Iraq’s minorities.
The provision, which allowed for provincial council
seats for Christians and two other minority groups,
was dropped before Parliament approved the elections
law on Sept. 24.
The protesters, holding lighted candles, marched
from the front steps of Mar Yousef Church in central
Baghdad to the church’s garden, where church leaders
gave speeches and a brief prayer was said.
“We have a question mark at this point about why our
government is rejecting us,” said Thair al-Sheekh, a
priest at Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad,www.ekurd.net
who attended the late
afternoon gathering. “They told us we don’t have a
place in our government, and we don’t know why.”
Parliament’s removal of the provision for
minorities, he said, was the most significant
political development for Christians since American
troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“I think it is the first time our government said
that they don’t want the Christians to stay here,”
he said. “This is what we understand from this
decision.”
The organizers of the protest said that they were
pleased with the turnout and happy that several
tribal leaders and other Muslim representatives from
a council in the Karada neighborhood came to show
their support.
But some participants said that they were
disheartened by the relatively small size of the
gathering. Many Christians stayed away out of fear
of bombings or other violence, they said.
“My friends are afraid, and they said I was mad to
come here,” said a 50-year old woman who identified
herself as a high school physics teacher but
requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.
“But I don’t care about death,” the woman said,
adding that she came to stand up for her religion
and her political rights.
Marwan Arkan, 20, said that the situation for
Christians in Iraq was still perilous. Last week, he
said, he was kidnapped by gunmen as he walked to
Sacred Heart Church, where he works. The kidnappers
held him for three days, he said, beat him and
finally let him go, for reasons that were unclear to
him.
“I thought that they kidnapped me because they
wanted to reach our priest, but why did they do
that?” Mr. Arkan asked. “Did they want to threaten
us?”
He said that when Parliament dropped the provision
for minorities from the provincial elections law,
“they canceled us from Iraq, as if someone had
kicked you out of your house.”
The law, passed on Sept. 24, still requires the
approval of a three-member presidential panel led by
President Jalal Talabani before it can take effect,
clearing the way for elections to be held in most of
the country early next year.
In passing the law, Parliament set aside the most
contentious issue it faced, how to resolve a bitter
dispute among Kurds, Turkmens, Christians and others
over control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
The provision on minorities that was removed from a
draft version of the law provided 13 provincial
council seats for Christians and 2 seats for two
small minority groups, Yazidis and Shabeks, in six
provinces.
Younadim Kanna, head of the Assyrian Democratic
Movement and the only Christian member of
Parliament, said that the presidential panel had
indicated it would approve the elections law,www.ekurd.net
but that it would also
recommend to Parliament that the measure dealing
with minorities be reinstated. Mr. Kanna said he
hoped to present to the speaker of the Parliament on
Tuesday a petition signed by 50 members requesting
that the lawmakers vote again on the set-asides for
minorities.
More than a million Christians once lived in Iraq,
but their numbers have dwindled to 500,000 or fewer.
The United Nations has expressed strong support for
the concerns of Christians and other minorities
about the election law. Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, the
deputy speaker of the Parliament, also called for
the article to be put back into the law. “There was
no intention, in fact, to exclude the minorities,”
Mr. Attiya said, adding that the removal of the
article was “an unintentional mistake.”
But Mr. Kanna said arguments over the seats allotted
for Yazidis and Shabeks, and resistance to the
provision within two large Shiite political parties,
had led to the measure being dropped.
Also on Monday, city officials in Baghdad announced
that the government had chosen a division of a
French company, Suez Environment, to build a water
treatment system for eastern Baghdad. The contract,
worth about $1 billion, would include the
construction of a large water treatment plant to
serve the Rusafa district, which includes Sadr City,
a sprawling, impoverished Shiite neighborhood with
two million residents. Four foreign companies had
bid on the contract, the officials said.
In the north of Iraq, Turkish bombers attacked
Kurdish separatist rebels on Monday in a mountainous
region near the borders with Turkey and Iran. No
casualties were reported.
Mezgen Amad, a leader of the Kurdistan Workers
Party, or P.K.K., also disputed on Monday a claim by
the Turks that the Kurdish rebels had killed 15
Turkish soldiers on Friday. Mr. Amad said that 62
Turkish soldiers and 9 fighters from the P.K.K. had
been killed in the clash, which lasted for five
hours.
"We want peace; we want to stop the fight,” Mr. Amad
said. “Turkey has to solve the Kurdish issue in
Turkey and give us our constitutional and cultural
rights.”
Reporting was contributed by Riyadh Mohammed, Atheer
Kakan and Ali Hameed from Baghdad, Sabrina Tavernise
from Istanbul, and an Iraqi employee of The New York
Times from Iraqi Kurdistan.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
nytimes com
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