Iraqi Christian women demonstrate in Baghdad city centre to protest that Christian villages in the Nineveh province were barred from the general Iraqi elections because of the absence of polling stations. Gunmen abducted four Egyptian telecoms engineers in Baghdad, heightening the fears of foreigners, as Iraq ‘s divided communities staked out their demands in the aftermath of the country’s historic election.(Photo: AFP / SABAH ARAR)

Hundreds of Iraqis shouted slogans and waived Iraqi flags Sunday outside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone to protest alleged voting irregularities in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul that they say prevented tens of thousands from voting in last weekend’s landmark elections.

In Bartala, a town near Mosul, Commission official Izzedine al-Mahmoudi told reporters in Baghdad that 15,188 people were unable to cast ballots in Iraq’s historic Jan. 30 elections because poll workers did not report to work because of security concerns.

Gunmen also looted some polling places, stealing ballot papers, al-Mahmoudi said, as reported by the Associated Press.

“There are a number of polling stations whose electoral material was looted by gunmen, and workers in the polling stations in many areas were targeted by gunmen,” he said. “They stole the ballot boxes and they tried to bribe the workers.”

Some northern Iraqi politicians, including representatives of Sunni Arab and Christian communities, had alleged that large numbers of their constituents were unable to vote because of electoral mismanagement or an attempt to keep them from the polls.

In addition, villages in the Iraq’s Nineveh province were reportedly barred from the general Iraqi elections because of the absence of polling stations.

Susan Patto, chief of staff to the secretary general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement in Iraq, said officials failed to deliver ballot boxes to five towns in the Ninevah Plain of Northern Iraq—all predominantly populated by Christian Assyrians.

“The people of those areas went to vote. When they found there were no boxes, they headed to our centers,” Patto said, according to the Decatur Daily.

Simon George, co-director of an Assyrian satellite television station, gave a similar report, saying he received “at least 100 calls” from Assyrians complaining about being deprived of the vote in Christian villages around Mosul.

While many Christians are hoping that Iraq will become a democratic and free secular state, with last week’s voting problems and the recent exodus of Iraq’s Christian minority, church leaders fear it could be difficult for Iraq to develop into a nation that values religious pluralism and tolerance. Currently, Christians are only a sliver of Iraq’s population, making up about three percent of the nation’s population of 26 million. After a string of church bombings in recent months prompted Christians to flee the country to neighboring Jordan and Syria, as many as 40,000 of Iraq’s 700,000 Christians have reportedly fled.

In addition to the recent string of Church bombings in Iraq, persecution watchdog groups and news agencies report that Iraq’s Christian minority have also been the victims of kidnappings and murders, including beheadings, in recent months. There have been reports of acid being thrown in the faces of women who were not wearing veils and shootings of workers in video and liquor stores in Christian communities. They have also reported receiving threats of kidnappings.

Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs vowed last year that his country would protect religious freedom, particularly the Iraqi Christian community, during a Dec. 13meeting with Pope John Paul II. However, according to reports, the exodus of Iraq’s Christian minority has reportedly increased, and situation “has gotten worse,” according to Nina Shea, director of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The persecution “is accelerating,” Shea told Baptist Press (BP) last month. “They’re accelerating it now because this is an opportunity to drive [the Christians] out.”

In a report made by the Open Doors ministry last July, Jerry Dykstra, the ministry’s media relations director stated, “That’s really the goal of the terrorists—to drive out the Christian community which numbers about 500-thousand from Iraq, so that when they’re making a new government, they will not have any Christians to share the government with or give religious freedom.”

Currently, with results in from 80 percent of the province’s polling stations, AP reported that the largely Shiite United Iraqi Alliance which is backed by the country’s top Shiite clerics had the most votes with 27,645.

The Kurdish Alliance was next with 18,791 votes.

A party headed by Iraq’s Sunni president, Ghazi al-Yawer, received only 15,832 votes.

The faction led by pro-U.S. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had just over 13,000 votes.

With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly AP reports that leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be enshrined in the new constitution.

Meanwhile, sources say Sunni Muslim insurgents are continuing in their post-election wave of killing.
 

Kenneth Chan kenneth@christianpost.com

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