Iraq's Christians Want a Province of Their Own

CHALDO-ASSYRIAN/SYRIAC WATCH:

Iraq's Christians Want a Province of Their Own

Posted GMT 3-18-2011 3:1:7 (AINA)

For the first time ever, Christian leaders have formally demanded the creation of a province in the Ninawa Plain, east of Mosul.

No one can predict whether their demand will be met.

Some people are in favour, because it will encourage Christians to stay in the country, while others say that creating such a province will only isolate Christians from other Iraqis.

The demand came three weeks after the bloody attack on the "Our Lady of Deliverance" Church in Baghdad on 31 October 2010.

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The Ninawa Plain, with an area of more than five thousand square kilometers, equal to both the regions of al-Muthanna and al-Qadisiyah in southern Iraq, is inhibited by more than half a million people.

The area consists of three districts: al-Hamdaniya, Sheekhan and Tallkeef. It is inhibited by a Christian majority, but there are also other ethnicities and followers of other religions such as the Yazidis, the Shabak and some Shiites, Turkmen and Arabs.

Christians living in this region speak the Syriac language. After 2003, the Iraqi government allowed the use of this language in most of the region's schools.

Christian parties and organisations have held two meetings: one in the city of Erbil in November 2010, and the second in the capital, Baghdad in January 2011.

The outcome was a memorandum to the presidencies of the republic, the parliament and the council of ministers, demanding the creation of a province for "Chaldo-Assyrian Syriac people" in the Ninawa Plain, and the establishment of autonomous rule for Christians in areas where they constitute a majority in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

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