ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A United States State Department report on Wednesday said that religious minorities in federal Iraq continued to face “widespread” restrictions in 2023.
In its 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom in Iraq, the State Department said that “restrictions on freedom of religion remained widespread outside the Iraqi Kurdistan Region,” highlighting illegal detention, physical abuse, and demographic reduction of religious minorities by government forces and other armed groups.
“There were credible reports that government forces, including the Federal Police, the National Security Service (NSS), and the PMF [Popular Mobilization Forces], abused and tortured individuals - particularly Sunni Arabs - during arrest, pretrial detention, and after conviction,” read the report, adding that Sunni Arabs represent around 90 percent of all prisoners in Iraq, 9,000 of which have received death sentences.
The report added that brigades of the state-linked PMF have been accused of reducing Christian demographics in the Nineveh Plains by helping the predominantly Shiite Shabaks seize at least three Christian properties in 2023.
Federal authorities also continued to force Christian families who are registered as Muslims to either register their children as Muslims or have them remain undocumented, according to the report. The religion of unrecognized religious groups such as Zoroastrians, Kakais, and Bahais continued to be listed as “Islam” in identification documents.
Iraq’s Christian community has been devastated in the past two decades. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, sectarian warfare prompted followers of Iraq’s multiple Christian denominations to flee, and attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard.
There currently remains fewer than 150,000 Christians in Iraq, according to the State Department report, a massive decline from an estimated 1.5 million in 2003.
Attempts at demographic change were also reported in Shingal (Sinjar) where Iran-backed forces have allegedly purchased properties belonging to Yazidis and Sunni Arabs.
The report noted that only a small number of Yazidis had returned to Shingal, citing “poor infrastructure, the lack of empowered local government, and the presence of Iran-aligned militia groups as well as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).”
Yazidis in Iraq have been subjected to countless heinous atrocities, including forced marriages, sexual violence, and massacres when ISIS captured their homeland of Shingal in 2014, bringing destruction to many villages and towns populated by the minority group.
The security situation in Shingal remains dire, making it difficult and dangerous for many displaced Yazidis to return. Clashes take place between Iraqi army and the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS), an all-Yazidi militia affiliated to the PKK. The YBS has also been affiliated to the PMF, which also maintains a significant presence in Shingal.
