Aid to the Church in Need: Iraq: Murder of Christians stuns Kirkuk

Iraq: Murder of Christians stuns Kirkuk

Posted by Press Release on 28/4/2009, 8:37 am
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ACN News, Tuesday, 28th April 2009 – IRAQ

Murder of Christians stuns Kirkuk

Archbishop: “We will not leave Iraq. We have a mission to stay here. Even if they try to kill us we will stay.”

By John Pontifex

IRAQ’S Christian community is in shock after the recent murder (Sun, 26th April) of three people including a newly engaged man and a woman just a year into her marriage.
Mrs Susan Latif David and her mother-in-law, Muna Banna David, were killed after armed men knocked and entered their home in the Domeez section of Iraq’s eastern city of Kirkuk.
At about the same time, 7pm, elsewhere in the city, Basil Shaba was murdered in a similar attack. His brother, Thamir, and father, Yousif, who were with him at the time, were also injured.
Speaking just after conducting the funeral in a packed Kirkuk Cathedral, Archbishop Louis Sako told Aid to the Church in Need of “the tears and sadness” of a people mourning three “innocent loved ones”.
Susan David, he explained, had been married for only one year. Her husband owns a restaurant near the cathedral.
Both Susan David and her mother-in-law were Chaldean Catholic but Mr Shaba who, Archbishop Sako said had “only recently got engaged”, was Syrian Orthodox.

Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk (Photo: ACN)

In his interview with the Catholic charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, an emotional Archbishop Sako described the funeral.
He said: “People were crying. We are all so sad. We only hope that the blood of the martyrs will one day bring us peace and stability.”
Nobody has yet been arrested in connection with the deaths but Archbishop Sako said that it was already clear that the murders were premeditated and that one probable key motive was to “force Christians to leave”.
He added: “We will not leave Iraq. We have a mission to stay here. We have to give witness to our Christian values.
“Even if they try to kill us we will stay.”
Archbishop Sako said that Kirkuk’s police chief had personally told him he “will do everything to ensure that those responsible will be arrested”.
The archbishop said that leaders from across Kirkuk had come for the funeral including the Mayor and leading Sheikhs. There had been widespread condemnation of the attacks.
Describing the probable motives for the killings as “complicated”, Archbishop Sako said that the attacks could be linked to the ongoing uncertainty over Kirkuk’s political future either as part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north or under the jurisdiction of Baghdad.
Yesterday’s killings come less than a month after a spate of murders of Christians across Iraq including Kirkuk.
There, Sabah Aziz Solaiman, 71, was killed during a robbery on the morning of 31st March.
Next day Nimroud Khodir Moshi was murdered outside his Baghdad restaurant and elsewhere in the capital, two sisters were killed.
Finally electrical generator operator repairman Abdul Aziz Elias Aziz was killed in Mosul.
The murders prompted Archbishop Sako to warn of a security “vacuum” opening up as a result of US military withdrawal from Iraq, which he said could lead to “civil war” and “Iraq’s division”.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.
Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.
The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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