No democracy for dhimmis. From AINA, with thanks to Nicolei:
Mubarak Sliva (58) sits in front of "Muntaka" coffe shop by an old table and drinks tea out of a little glass with his friends Michael and Jacob, He watches Shiites and the Kurds celebrating their election victory which will allow them to rule the country. Again and again Mubarak looks at this but seem like every time he feels like being stabbed in the heart. His friends feel sad also. The "Muntaka" is social center of the city of Qaraqosh located 15 kilometers distance from Mosul. All 30,000 inhabitants are Christian Assyrian who were prevented fom voting during the Iraqi elections."No one heard our voices, we were deprived of our constitutional right as in the Saddam Husseins time, nothing has changed", shouts Mubarak Sliva.East of Mosul, there are many places where only Christians live but because they wear the typical Arab clothing they are not noticed. Out of the 200,000 Assyrians in the region 90 percent were not allowed to vote. "The large iraqi parties celebrate, and the USA wants to establish democracy in Iraq but the minorites will not be part of it", complained Mubarak Sliva: " not even once any body cared to mention in Baghdad that we were deceived. It was alleged that they did not know what happened. That is a lie. Three weeks ago the American consul from Mosul visited us."
Louis Markus Ayoob (45), the deputy mayor and representative of the electoral committee for Qaraqosh, has testified that it was Kurd's intention to keep Christians from voting.
I'll bet that both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the US Senate aren't even aware that there's an ancient Christian community in them thar hills of northern Iraq.
Who or what kept them from voting?
Would like to see more about this.
Chuck:
Some post on JW told about the 'moderate' Kurds doing the preventing.
Voletti, that was probably me who gave the information about "moderate" Kurds keeping at least 100,000 Assyrians from voting. The US Assyrian community worked hard in the few days afterwards to alert the State Dept. about the loss of voting rights, but still, the ballot boxes never arrived. From what I can gather, the US government was just happy that the elections took place and cared little about unfortunate incidents in the minority communities..a leader of the Mandaean community, who had urged his followers to vote, was gunned down in front of his children on election day. As in Afghanistan, the administration, the State Dept. and the US military leaders seem to regard minority religious communities in Iraq as annoyances. But, how can democracies be established if minorities are not given "a seat at the table?" Yet, that is what happened in Afghanistan (officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan)and that is what will probably happen in Iraq.(most likely to be named the Islamic Republic of Iraq) I just saw that Dr. Rice has OK'ed the resumption of US military training for the Indonesian military, and this is after their government continues to allow their Islamists to murder and terrorize the Indonesian Christian community, with well-known incidents where Indonesian soldiers often side with the Islamists against the Christians as they go on their rampages.
Maryrose,
Your question, "... But, how can democracies be established if minorities are not given "a seat at the table?"
is an excellent one. The problem is, once again, related to our educational system, which does not teach us the difference between a "democracy" and a "representative republic."
A "democracy" is the unrestricted rule by a majority. As such, it can exclude anything that the majority doesn't wish to include, including the protection of the rights of the minorities. If a majority wants something, it's done, and the end result is no better than the exercise of a totalitarian ruler's whim.
Soon after the Constitution was completed, Ben Franklin was asked what sort of government we had been given; he responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." His words were prophetic, as our concept of a republic is fading.
In a representative republic where the rights of the individual are protected through reference to a constitution which requires such protection, the majority might want something passionately, but if that desire violates the rights of an individual, it can't have it. For example, if the majority of our own representative republic wanted to kill 6,000,000 Jews, it would just have to go sulk, because it wouldn't happen.
Ben Franklin had a lot to say about democracy; "Democracy," he said, "is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
turkmen were also prevented from voting. This is an issue where we may actuallly be able to have some allies in Turkey.
Please try http://www.fruitofislam.com/Kafir_Nation to get to the site to register for our roundtable discussion tomorrow at 10:00 pm EST.
Why? Because this is a chance to have a group discussion through co-jet, our readers' site behind jihadwatch. Please register and join in tonight. If this link fails you can find it through google.
Something stinks about this election.
If the whole point of them were to give the iraqi people a chance of finally voting, without the elections being rigged in favour of a military dictator, then how come muslims still managed to once again persecuted to prevent them from voting.
Did the presence of our troops, and our supervisions of these elections not ensure the same protections for iraqi christians???
It beggars belief thatin the first free iraqi elections in half a century and nothing changed for the christians of the country ; who are really the ones who have suffered persecution for generations in Iraq. Perhaps our forces should have done a little more towards eradicating islamic dominion, and spreading the western message of pro-equality and pro-secularism. This amounts to pure bigotry, and there's no excuse for it.
The media will hear of this, time for people to see how tolerant muslims are of other cultures in their societies.