Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-15-Speech-4-188"
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"en.20070215.25.4-188"2
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".
Mr President, I endorse this resolution, not least because, at least in some of its subsidiary clauses, it vigorously champions the rights of the persecuted and imperilled Christians of Iraq.
We must bear in mind that the Christian communities in today’s Iraq are probably some of the most ancient in the world. They have survived for 1 300 years as a minority in a Muslim-dominated part of the world, something for which those Muslims also deserve credit, yet today, in a time of massive Western presence in Iraq, they are under threat. This has to do with the fact that Iraq was put together as an artificial state after the First World War, that that state is now on the point of breaking up and that its constituent parts are attempting to make themselves homogenous units through a process of nationalistic self-discovery which, of course, poses a particular threat to the minorities.
There is one laudable exception, and that is the Kurdish sector. This is something worth highlighting. I do, however, call on Shias and Sunnis to follow in the great tolerant tradition of their forefathers and once again afford the Christian communities in Iraq the protection that they have enjoyed in that part of the world for over a thousand years. I call, above all, on the Commission to go into bat strongly for the rights of Christians, because who else will do this if we do not?"@en1
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