Lebanese Christians Declare Solidarity With Iraqi Christians

(BEIRUT)...Many Lebanese political parties and parliamentarians called on the Eastern Bishops to hold an emergency meeting to condemn the campaign of assassinations and displacements the Christians are being subjected to in Mosul.

After meeting with the representatives of the Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Iraqis, Mr. Nadeem Gemayel (son of assassinated Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel) called upon Pope Benedict the XVI to act to end the ordeal of the Iraqi Christians. He maintained: "It is a baffling thing that the people of Mosul resort to displace the Christians from their homeland where they existed for hundreds of years. It certainly sounds like a conspiracy concocted abroad to deprive Iraq from its social components and distinguished confessional fabric." He added, "The Christians of Iraq are not intruders but have been there since before Christ; how does the Iraqi government ignore such conspiracy by keeping quiet? And why didn't the honorable among the Iraqi people intervene to stop such human bleeding in their country? And why there is such total silence in the Arab and international community about such displacement practices?"

He went on to say: "I call upon his Holiness the Pope and the Bishops of the East to sound the alarm, I also call upon the Presidents and the Monarchs of the Arab countries to move swiftly to forestall the execution of such a malicious conspiracy, for any harm inflicted on the Iraqi Christians is a harm inflicted on the Christians in Lebanon and the Orient. We will not permit what happened to our brothers in the last century -- when they were subjected to the most heinous crimes of massacre, displacement, and expulsion, and whose tragedy continues until this day -- to happen again to the Christians in Iraq." He concluded: "We will stand by our brethrens in the Christian communities of the East and their extension in Lebanon who painfully expressed their deep worries about what is happening to them in their motherland." (From AINA & AZZAMAN)