ASIA/IRAQ - US Senators: The United States have to encourage the creation of a province for Christians in the Nineveh Plain

Thursday, 29 January 2015

Washington (Agenzia Fides) - The situation of suffering experienced by Christians and other minorities forced to flee from Nineveh Plain raises "serious concern", to the point of asking the US State Department to "support the government of Iraqi’s establishment of the Nineveh Plains administrative province" and provide "direct support programs designed to assist vulnerable Iraqi ethnic and religious minorities". These are the concrete proposals contained in a petition that 17 US Senators write to the Secretary of State, John Kerry, urging direct intervention on behalf of the US Government on the Iraqi institutions in order to push them to increase the levels of institutional and security protection of the indigenous Christian communities. The senators, in supporting their proposals, appeal to the legislative appropriations for the fiscal year 2015, which provide for actions of the State Department to support "programs to assist" the ethnic-religious minorities.
In addition, the Senators also refer to law FY15 for the programming of the activities of National Defence, where there are expressions that allow direct supplies in favor of the security forces committed to protecting Iraq's minority communities. In the letter, which is dated January 27, 2015, the petitioners also mention Article 125 of the Iraqi Constitution currently in force, which guarantees the protection and the legal regulation of "administrative, political, cultural and educational rights of different nationalities, including Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians and all the other components".
The definition of the Iraqi Christian communities as ethnic-national entities, also contained in the Iraqi Constitution is supported and theorized especially by circles and nationalist groups that are very active in the Chaldean and Assyrian diaspora communities in the US. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 29/01/2015)


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