Tag: Iraq

IS sex slave recalls having to watch torture of other women

October 3, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Qaraqosh, Women

Iraqi Christian Rita Habib was sold four times on the ISIS sex slave market. (Photo: Still from video)

One of the Christian women who was captured, trafficked and used as a sex slave by ISIS has told The European Post she was forced to watch public executions and the torture of other women. “They did evil things to us, they were beating us every day, sexual assaults, and trading us as . . . Read More

Kurdistan elections: Christian parties want ‘real needs’ of minority to be heard

September 28, 2018 Iraq Bashar Warda, Elections, Iraq, Kurds, Louis Raphael I Sako, Minorities, Nineveh Plains, USA

The site of Mar Elia Church in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan region, where hundreds of Christians camped, displaced by Islamic State. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The Christian minority in Iraqi Kurdistan is hoping for its “real” representatives to be voted into the Kurdish regional parliament this Sunday, 30 September, reports Kurdish news service Rudaw. The presidential and parliamentary elections in the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq are the first after a referendum last year in . . . Read More

‘UN must recognise persecution of Christians in Middle East as genocide’

September 17, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Europe, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Jan Figel, Middle East, Sam Brownback, Syria, UN, Yazidis

At the moment of the photo taken, ISIS had just been pushed out of the home towns of these Christians. People were hoping and anticipating to return to their towns some day.

The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) is appealing to the United Nations to recognise the persecution of Christians in Iraq and Syria as “genocide”, reports the US-based National Review. The ECLJ, an affiliate of the American Center for Law and Justice, said a “genocide” declaration is necessary to . . . Read More

Attacks against Copts ‘among deadliest acts of religious persecution’ – report

September 14, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Copts, Egypt, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Lake Chad, Sahel, Somalia, Syria, Tony Blair, Women, Yemen

This is one of the fifty five photos that is part of the photo story "Renewed day by day," commissioned by World Watch Monitor, exploring the extensive damage to churches in Egypt's Minya region that took place in late August 2013.

Attacks by members of the Islamic State group against Egypt’s Coptic Christian community “were among the deadliest acts of religious persecution” last year, according a new report presented in Washington DC yesterday, 13 September. “Fifty-three per cent of ISIS attacks against the public in 2017 were aimed at the Coptic . . . Read More

Fall in Christian refugee admissions ‘suggests Trump has no real interest in religious persecution’

September 13, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Donald Trump, Genocide, Iraq, Jan Figel, Mike Pence, Minorities, Myanmar, Refugees, Syria, UK, UN, USA

Iraqi Christians who fled Islamic State have found shelter in a church yard in Erbil, Iraq. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The United States, under President Trump, has admitted 40 per cent fewer Christian refugees in the past year, US broadcaster NBC News has reported. As the Trump administration has implemented stricter policies on immigration and refugees, almost 11,000 Christians looking for a safe place to go were reportedly refused entry to . . . Read More

‘Iraq without Christians is like a garden without a rose’

August 31, 2018 Iraq Chaldeans, Churches, Iraq, Islamic State, Qaraqosh, Syriacs

Four years ago this month, the northern Iraqi city of Qaraqosh, or Baghdeda in the Syriac language, was invaded by the Islamic State group, forcing most of its population to flee for their lives. Prior to IS’s invasion, 50,000 Christians resided in Qaraqosh, 97 per cent of the population. October . . . Read More

‘ISIS won despite defeat as West was unwilling to confront it’

August 23, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Andrew Brunson, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Minorities, Rape, Syria, Turkey, USA

Iraqi Christians ask the international community for help as they are facing annihilation by Islamic State. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The Islamic State group may have been defeated on the battlefield, but the West has allowed its ideology to “percolate” and in that case it won, writes Seth J. Frantzman for the Jerusalem Post. “[ISIS] won in Iraq and Syria by destroying minority communities. It won because today the international . . . Read More

Nineveh Plains Christians ‘slowly returning to normal’

August 8, 2018 Iraq Assyrians, Baghdad, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh

Four years since IS seized the town of Karamles in northern Iraq’s Nineveh Plains, the local Christian community are “returning, albeit slowly, to normal”, AsiaNews reports. Hundreds of Christians joined in a procession following a Mass at the weekend, holding candles and chanting psalms, to celebrate their return and the new life . . . Read More

Iraqi archbishop tells USAID delegation to hurry up aid delivery

July 4, 2018 Iraq Bashar Warda, Donald Trump, Erbil, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Louis Raphael I Sako, Middle East, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Religious freedom, Sunni, USA, Yazidis

An Iraqi Catholic archbishop has said he and other bishops are “delighted” that the US aid arm is to make good on a pledge to send aid directly to non-Muslim communities recovering from ISIS’s occupation of their towns and villages, but warned “time is running [out]”. Archbishop Bashar Warda of . . . Read More

UN chief ‘personally concerned’ about return of Christians to Iraq and Syria

June 21, 2018 Afghanistan, Al-Shabaab, Antonio Guterres, Asylum seekers, Bashiqa, Human rights, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Kachin, London, Migrants, Myanmar, Patriarch Kirill, Refugees, Somalia, South Sudan, Southeast Asia, Syria, UN

Tree and Arabic painting on the wall in Bashiqa, a town near Mosul in Iraq where Christians are slowly returning, saying: "Tomorrow will be more beautiful." (will be better) (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The UN’s Secretary General has stressed the importance of Christians returning to the areas from which they fled in Iraq and Syria. “I am fully convinced that after the stability of the situation in Iraq and Syria and the adoption of a certain political decision, it is very important to . . . Read More

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