Metro Chaldeans Meet to Mount Relief Efforts for Harried Iraq Christians

October 21, 2008

Author: Gregg Krupa

Source: The Detroit News

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081021/LIFESTYLE04/810210382/1041/LIFESTYLE04

When his phone rings, Nabil Roumayah knows it's more bad news from Iraq.

"My friends and family are calling all of the time and telling us that people were shot and killed because they are Christian, and there are cars going around with loudspeakers saying all Christians should leave their homes or become Muslim," said Roumayah, a Chaldean activist. "We have a lot of people in our community who live there."

Iraq has been a less violent country over the past year, but not for Christian minorities. In a spasm of violence over the past three weeks, they have paid even more of the costs of the war.

Having fled Basra and Baghdad as early as 2003, Chaldeans and other Iraqi Christians arrived in Syria, Jordan and the United States. Some went to northern Iraq, in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, the homeland for 2,000 years of the Catholic Chaldeans, who speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. Among the few religious groups in Iraq with no militias, the Chaldeans fled their homes and moved into churches, monasteries and tents in open fields.

Now, with remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq and bands of organized criminals harrying them, they are on the move, yet again, amid what international relief agencies call some of the worst circumstances facing people displaced by war anywhere in the world.

"How can all of these families be forced to leave and no one does anything?" said Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle, a jurisdiction of the Chaldean Catholic Church, based in Southfield. "It really is an organized crime against humanity."

Chaldeans, who live in Metro Detroit in larger numbers than anywhere outside Iraq, have set an organizational meeting for tonight in Southfield to mount relief efforts.