Iraq’s Christian minorities complain over new ID card applications

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Christian minorities in Iraq complain that applications for new identity cards issued by Baghdad no longer recognize the religious ethnicities of applicants, which they note is a violation of the constitution and individual rights.

That means that new identity cards issued by the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad will also no longer identify applicants as Chaldean, Assyrian or Syriac, according to Iraq’s Christian minorities.

If applicants are not Arab, Kurdish or Turkmen, they are identified only as “other” on the new application forms, Christian officials and MPs say.

Louis Raphael Sako, the patriarch of Chaldeans in Iraq and around the world, has sent a letter to the Iraqi parliament and electoral commission, asking that they abide by the constitution and identify Syriac applications according to their ethnicity.

Yunadim Yusuf Kana, general secretary of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, told Rudaw that, “We are grateful for Sako’s efforts, but we are not men of media and Facebook and will try to solve the issue through legal means.”

He added that, “This is a political goal of some chauvinists that want to isolate us from the political and national process.”

Kana, who is also an MP in the Iraqi parliament, said that the Iraqi constitution recognizes the different languages of the population. But he said there were efforts to rescind Article 125, which outlines the rights of the Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriac citizens.

The process of issuing new national identity cards has started across Iraq.