Christmas is cancelled as Iraqis unite to fight for their country
THE towering Christmas tree in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square had always been a wondrous sight. The giant baubles, twinkling tinsel and an angelic figure crowning the tip had brightened up the otherwise drab central plaza.
Families of all faiths would gather on December’s first Sunday as its lights were switched in a formal ceremony. This year, however, the tree is bare. Earlier this month, leaders of the Chaldean faith – Iraq’s largest Christian denomination – cancelled public celebrations of Christmas in solidarity with those protesting at the government.
“Morally and spiritually we cannot celebrate in such an atmosphere of tension. It’s not normal to show our joy and happiness while others are dying,” said Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, the patriarch of Iraq’s Chaldean Church.
Iraqis began demonstrating in October against corruption, unemployment and the lack of public services. The protests then escalated into wider calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq.
The number of protesters has swelled in cities across predominantly Shia Muslim areas of central and southern Iraq. They have faced a violent crackdown: at least 450 have been killed and 15,000 wounded by security forces and unidentified militias firing live ammunition and tear gas, the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights said.
“We have been going through a very difficult situation, as Christians in Iraq, and this special occasion only takes place once a year,” Ninous Robert Youkhanna, an NGO worker, told The Daily Telegraph. “But it is the right thing to do for all the Iraqis that died, and standing in unity with those protesting.”
Mr Youkhanna, 30, who lives with his wife and five-year-old daughter in Baghdad, said they would mark the holiday at home and instead of exchanging presents, buy food, clothes and water to distribute to protesters.
Cardinal Sako said money allocated by the Church to street decorations
‘We cannot celebrate in such an atmosphere of tension. It’s not normal to show our joy … while others are dying’
and festivities would be donated to groups helping wounded protesters.
On a recent visit to Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the protest movement, the patriarch said it was time for Iraqis of all sects to unite: “Now there you feel you are Iraqi,” he said after observing the sea of Iraqi flags fluttering in the square. “A new Iraq is being born.”
Iraq’s Christian community has suffered decades of persecution, violence and war. The community has been dramatically depleted by attacks from Sunni fundamentalists and driven into exile by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants in the north.
They once numbered 7 per cent of the population, but now only 300,000 remain of the 1.5 million who lived in Iraq before the US occupation.
The Archbishop of Erbil, the Rt Rev Bashar Warda, warned earlier this year that Christianity in Iraq was “perilously close to extinction”.
The sectarian form of governance in Iraq has empowered Shia-majority parties over others. Its Shia leaders in turn receive considerable backing and support from Iran.
“Sectarianism is a tool successive governments have used to divide us,” Ahmed al-baghdadi, a 23-year-old student, said. “All of us are out on the street together to make it better for everyone, not just one group.”
Christians from northern Nineveh Plain have been going to Baghdad in buses to join the protests. In Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in the Plain, those who cannot travel hold prayer vigils and fly Iraqi flags in solidarity.
Churches in Basra and Baghdad have offered shelter to protesters, while the Assyrian Church of the East has distributed food and water.
“We have to all form a bond to topple the corrupt regime, otherwise we stand no chance,” Juliana Taimoorazy, the founder and president of Iraqi Christian Relief Council, said. “Saint Paul in Corinthians describes when one part of the body suffers, the rest must suffer with it. Today what that means is if our brethren are suffering, we must suffer with them.”