Stockholm, Sweden, May 28, 2008 / 03:36 am
Chaldean Christians exiled from Iraq on Sunday demonstrated outside Sweden’s parliament to draw attention to the plight of their fellow Iraqi minorities. Demonstrators denounced what they said was “a new wave of ethnic cleansing” in Iraq, warning that the ancient non-Muslim communities of Iraq could be wiped out by sectarian violence and intimidation.
The protests come just days before an international conference dedicated to political and economic reform, Cybercast News Service reports. Attendees at the conference, scheduled for Thursday near Stockholm, include U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. The conference is a follow-up to last year’s International Compact with Iraq.
Speeches at the protesters’ rally focused on the continuing harassment and violence inflicted by fundamentalists in Iraq. Speakers denounced abductions and assaults on girls and women and also the forcing of women to wear veils in line with some Islamic doctrines. They also decried extremists’ murder of Christian clerics such as Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul Paulos Faraj Rahho, who died after gunmen abducted him from a church earlier this year.
Rally participants called for international support for an autonomous safe region for Iraqi Christians in the historical Assyrian region in northern Iraq.