ICC Note: The military defeat of ISIS did not eliminate old feelings of prejudice that many feel towards Iraq’s Christians. These prejudices persist even in the village of Shaqlawa, which is located in the more open Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many Christians remain fearful that all it takes is a word from a religious leader to ignite a series of violent persecution events that would force them from their homes.  

06/18/2018 Iraq (Crux) –  Heroic efforts are underway to guarantee the continued presence of Christianity in Iraq, particularly on the northern Nineveh Plains, a land dotted with monasteries built in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries.

Not far from the Plains, located on both sides of the border dividing Iraq from Kurdish-held territories, stands the city of Shaqlawa. It serves as a reminder of what awaits if the waves of anti-Christian hostility that often crest here, some covert and some brutally in-your-face, don’t recede soon.

Once a city where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together in peace, Shaqlawa, located some 20 miles from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, today has 10,000 Muslim families and fewer than 200 Christian ones.

There are no Jewish families left, and Christians continue to move out at a pace of 10 families a year, as they’re no longer able to resist bans on opening stores and owning businesses.

Among the Christian families left is that of Father Samir Sheer, a Chaldean Catholic priest who was ordained five years ago and who currently lives in Ankawa, the Christian quarter of Erbil.

“We have many Muslims in Shaqlawa who have the same ideas of [Islamic terrorist group] ISIS,” Sheer told Crux on Thursday. “They hate us. Not all of them, because I have many Muslim friends, but the big majority doesn’t like us.”

In addition, he’s convinced – due, he says, to personal experience – that if an Imam points his finger at a Christian, calls him an “infidel” and asks his followers to kill him, “they will [do it], no questions asked.”

In 1997, a friend of Sheer, Havel Lazar, and his father, Lazar Mati, were killed by a mob of 200 angry Muslim Kurds. They were taunted, tortured and butchered, and their bodies were cut into pieces and thrown in the garden of a Christian family.

Allegedly, the Muslim Kurds killed them because the sister of Sheer’s friend wanted to marry a Muslim man, though the priest suspects the fact that Lazar Mati had gotten a position at the local government office also contributed.

Their crimes were never investigated, and today they’re honored on the grounds of a parish that belongs to the only Catholic church in town. The violence against this father and son, Sheer said, began after an Imam accused them of being infidels and called for their murder.

Masoud Barzani, at the time leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and eventually the president of the Kurdistan Region for over 12 years, went to Shaqlawa at the time and promised to stop the growing violence against Christians, who were victims of burglaries and arson, yet nothing was done

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For interviews with Claire Evans, ICC’s Regional Manager, please contact Olivia Miller, Communications Coordinator: [email protected].