Patriarchs call for liberation of Iraqi lands for displaced Christians after ISIS attacks

Marking the second year since terrorists displaced tens of thousands of Christians, Syriac Patriarchs called for the liberation of the Iraqi Christian lands.

Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan and Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch delivered a joint statement, as reported by the Catholic Herald.

"On June 10, 2014, our people were forced to leave Mosul. On the eve of August 7 of the same year, the uprooting continued and our people were forced to leave...other villages and towns of the Nineveh Plain," the patriarchs stated.

"Today, two years after the calamity that was brought upon our people, the decision-making countries and the international community remain silent and inactive towards the ethnic cleansing of a historical people who founded the civilizations of the area," they said.

The prelates denounced the atrocities caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) terrorist group and hailed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other countries for declaring these atrocities as genocide.

They also recounted the suffering they witnessed by the uprooted Christians who were forced to settle in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. They noted that the displaced Christians lacked basic necessities such as housing work, healthcare, and schooling for the children.

Younan, the spiritual leader of 158,000 Syriac Catholics, spoke less than a year ago to the congregation at St. Toma Syriac Catholic Church in Farmington Hills, Michigan where he begged the West to stand up for the people in Iraq and Syria.

In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need in December 2014, Younan revealed that he went to France and Europe to seek help for the persecuted Christians in their community. However, he was disappointed to realize that the Western world chose to remain silent instead. By that time, there were already about 140,000 Christian refugees.

The patriarch denounced the West who chose to ignore Iraqi Christians simply because they offered no economic value.

Younan lamented that the Western policymakers choose not to "help those who have neither the numbers, nor the riches to make them attractive."

"And we have no oil—that is to say, we do not offer any economic advantages," he said.