From WND, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
As the Iraqi national election approaches, terrorist insurgents and Kurdish paramilitary groups continue to target the ChaldoAssyrian Christian minority, trying to prevent them from freely participating in the vote, according to a human rights group.
“These Christians have endured suicide bombings at their churches, acid thrown on women for not wearing the hijab, kidnappings for profit and the murder of store owners,” says Washington, D.C.-based International Christian Concern.
ICC says that in addition, the Kurdish authority has withheld crucial funding and has been linked to paramilitary groups targeting the ChaldoAssyrian villages in the Assyrian Administrative Region east of Mosul.
Out of $20 billion designated and distributed to rebuild Iraq, the Kurdish administrators have released no money for reconstruction in ChaldoAssyrian areas, the group said.
I also received this most interesting email. I have been unable to verify its assertions, but they are worth noting in light of the above:
You probably don’t know this, but the muslims that are running the Iraq elections have offically stole it from us Christians.
First with San Diego, with about 70,000 Chaldeans/Assyrians there, they have forced them to go to LA to vote. Hmmm. Do you think they will drive all the way there twice? (Once for registration, once for voting.)
They tried to take it away from the 100,000 Assyrians living in Chicago. They planned not to have a voting booth there, but after massive protests, they finally gave in.
As for Detroit, well, everyone knowns this is the single largest Iraq
community here living in Sterling Heights. Guess where they made the
single voting booth at? 40 miles away at a city that has nobody ever
heard of called Southgate. Go look up the map at yahoo and see how far it is.Me here in Detroit, was so excited about these elections and was hoping to give some voice for our people. But now everyone here in our community is so saddened with this issue. They know not more then 10% of Chaldeans in Detroit now will vote. How are we to convince the old men and women to drive 1 hour back and forth twice if they don’t know how to use the highways?
January 30 has offically become the saddest day for the Christians of
Iraq. Every one of the Christians from Detroit to Iraq are devastated.
ADDENDUM: Of course, inconvenient polling places are no comparison to what Christians are suffering in Iraq. But the possibility that the same forces trying to keep Christians from voting in Iraq are doing it here is certainly raised by this email, whatever its merits.