LONDON - Church leaders in England wrote a letter to the British prime minister last week, lamenting the lukewarm response to the plight of Iraq’s Christians in the face of attacks by the Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS).
“There’s little excuse for the dithering that continues to plague much of the Western response at present,” Reverend David S. Walker, the Bishop of Manchester, told Rudaw.
He said that the UK could do much to help tens of thousands of Christians who have fled Mosul and surrounding towns to the autonomous Kurdistan Region.
“In terms of what the UK and other governments can do to protect religious and other minorities I think we do have to rely on the proper authorities in the country itself,” he said.
The bishop of Leeds, Nicholas Baines, criticized British Prime Minister David Cameron in a letter that was supported by the archbishop of Canterbury, for UK's “muddled and reactive” foreign policy towards the Middle East, particularly with regards to Christians.
“The fear that I and many others in church leadership had before the 2003 war was that Iraq would, after the removal of Saddam Hussein, descend into many warring factions,” said reverend Walker in an interview with Rudaw.
Reverend Walker said that, because of its involvement in the war in Iraq in 2003, “Britain has a particular moral obligation to deal with the events that are part of the consequence of our earlier actions.”
“I think that obligation stretches from the Christian community in Northern Iraq to include other minorities who are being expelled from their homelands or threatened with obliteration by IS,” he added.
The reverend said that many Muslims he has worked with in the UK condemn the actions of the IS militants.
“Inevitably, there is a danger that some in the West and elsewhere will see IS as being in some way representative of Islam and in consequence they will impute similar views onto other Muslims who by no means share them,” he said.
“I am sorry for my many Muslim friends and colleagues here in Manchester and the wider UK when they are accused of sharing views which they find just as abhorrent as I do myself,” he added.
Reverend Walker praised the people of the Kurdistan Region for aiding the many Christian refugees who have taken shelter there.
“I, along with many others in the UK, have been impressed by the way in which the Kurdish people have responded to recent events, not least that they have clearly shown themselves not simply to be pursuing self-interest but to have humanitarian values and motivations,” he explained.
He said that the Kurds deserve a wider political recognition.
“I would anticipate that Kurdish voices will be listened to with greater respect and their political and other aspirations given a wider hearing the more that they are seen to be acting in this way,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Vatican’s Special Envoy Cardinal Fernando Filoni visited Erbil earlier this month to address the plight of Christian refugees.
He delivered an undisclosed amount of funds from Pope Francis, given as a personal contribution to help the displaced.
According to the United Nations, there are more than 1.2 million internally displaced persons in Iraq, as well as at least 10,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria.
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