2014-08-16 12:06:00

Displaced Iraqi Christians: Charity describes scenes of suffering


(Vatican Radio)  International concern is growing over the huge scope of the humanitarian crisis facing hundreds of thousands of displaced people from religious minorities in northern Iraq including Christians and Yazidis.   A team from the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, (ACN)  have been visiting displaced Christians in towns and villages across Iraq’s Kurdistan area to offer help and support.  They saw people suffering in stifling summer heat, living under tents and facing desperate anxiety about their future.  One of the team’s members was the ACN Projects Manager Regina Lynch who spoke to Vatican Radio’s Susy Hodges about what they saw and heard:

Listen to the full interview with Regina Lynch of Aid to the Church in Need: 

Lynch said the daytime temperature in these areas is between 43 and 45 degrees centigrade and one can imagine how hot and uncomfortable it is to be living in tents in the torrid summer heat, especially for the elderly and children.  When asked to describe the morale of the displaced Christians, Lynch said all of them are desperately anxious about their future. “They’re afraid, they are very worried about their future” but she paid tribute to the “wonderful work” being done by the local Catholic Church to provide these displaced people with their most immediate needs.  Despite this, Lynch said “it’s a very, very desperate situation” for an estimated 100,000 Iraqi Christians who were forced to flee their homes with only the clothes on their back. 

Asked whether these displaced Christians see a future for themselves in Iraq,  Lynch said the people they met are divided about whether to flee their homeland.  “We meet people who want to leave and then we meet people who do not want to leave.”  They said to us, “we’ve been here for generations, this is our history, this is our home.”  She added that one message that came across very strongly was that many of the displaced people do want to stay in Iraq but only on condition that there’s “an assurance of  international protection” to avoid the risk of enduring another offensive by the Islamic State militants.   








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