Iraqi lawmakers highlight "political" killings of Christians (Roundup)

Feb 25, 2010, 12:08 GMT

Mosul, Iraq - Lawmakers from the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh on Thursday said a recent spate of violence against Christians in the area was intended to stir up religious and ethnic tension.

Representatives of Nineveh's Christian population say Christians in the province have been subject to a wave of lethal violence and threats in lead up to the next month's elections.

At least eight Christians have been murdered in Mosul, the provincial capital, since February 14 alone. At least 12 have been killed since January.

'The purpose of targeting Christians in Nineveh province is to perpetuate instability between the province's different religions, creeds, and ethnicities,' Hisham al-Tai, a lawmaker with the Iraqi Accord Front, told reporters.

The election is scheduled for March 7.

The head of Mosul University, Said al-Diwaji, said some 1,500 of his students would not be able to get to school because of fears for their safety.

He said that the head of Mosul security had asked that buses not take some 1,500 Christian students from Qaraqosh, roughly 30 kilometres east of Mosul, to the university because of threats to blow up the buses.

Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse - and dangerous - regions of Iraq. Iraqi and US officials describe the city as al-Qaeda's last urban stronghold in the country.

Tensions have been high in the province since an Arab nationalist party won last year's provincial polls on a platform of taking back control of the government and security services from Kurdish parties and allied militias.

Yehia Abdu, a member of Nineveh's provincial council, accused Iraq's central government, the provincial government, and the security services 'of failing to disclose those behind the targeting of Christians.'

'The targeting of Christians serves a political agenda, by pitting one group against a minority. The real losers are the Iraqi people,' he said.

A Christian man and his two sons were fatally shot in Mosul on Tuesday. Their murder followed five similar shootings, in at least one case by men who told the victims they were secret police agents.

Many Christians fled the area after a similar wave of attacks targeted their community in late 2008, ahead of provincial council elections.

Christian lawmaker Yonadam Kanna accused the central government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of not doing enough to protect the region's Christians from 'crimes of a political nature.'

He further accused the government of burying the findings of its investigations of the recent killings and those that took place in 2008, 'perhaps out of fear for its political alliances ahead of the elections.'

He blamed a 'lack of coordination' between the KRG and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government in Baghdad for creating 'a security vacuum' that allowed the attacks to continue.

The New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch this week said the attacks were 'most probably politically motivated.'

'Iraq's authorities need to act now to stop this campaign of violence against Christians from spreading again,' Human Rights Watch's deputy Middle East director, Joe Stork, said.

'In particular, the government needs to see that those responsible for these murders are swiftly arrested and prosecuted to protect Mosul's Christians from further violence,' he added.