ASIA/IRAQ - Chaldean Patriarch: "foreign bullies" or sectarian militias to protect Christians in the Nineveh Plain are not needed

Wednesday, 1 February 2017 oriental churches   geopolitics   refugees  

SaintAdday.com

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) – There is no need for foreign forces to protect villages and areas of the Nineveh Plain where sooner or later Christians who lived there until August 2014 will return, when those territories were conquered by the jihadists of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (Daesh). This was stressed by Chaldean Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako I, in an interview published by the online magazine ankawa.com, referring to the proposals of those seeking the intervention of foreign armies and international military coalitions to ensure the resettlement of Christian refugees in those lands, while the offensive to oust the jihadists of Daesh also from Mosul, their last stronghold in Iraq, continues.
The Primate of the Chaldean Church admits the possible usefulness of a UN involvement or observers of the European Community to monitor and encourage the return of the Christians of the Nineveh Plain to their homes, keeping watch to prevent any possible violation. At the same time it strongly emphasizes the rejection of any "foreign bullying", and also rejects the prospect of institutionalizing "Christian militias" organized on a sectarian basis, outside the framework provided by civilian and national military institutions. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 01/02/2017)


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