Local Iraqis should decide future of Nineveh Plain, patriarch says

July 05, 2017

The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako, said that the Iraqi residents of the villages of the Nineveh Plain should decide the future of area as it is liberated from ISIS control.

“Though we appreciate those who are not from the region or those who left the country for many years living in diaspora countries, with all the suffering they feel, they cannot talk about the future of this region because they are away from the current situation and what is really going on,” he said, as he called for a future “far from any foreign agendas or personal narrow-minded interests.”

The patriarch also called on the Iraqi government to “fulfill its obligations to impose security and law; to reconstruct these townships with their homes, schools, institutions, official services, streets, hospitals, and churches; and to help the citizens by listening to them and meeting their true and legitimate demands.”

 

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Further information:

• The Future of the Townships of Nineveh Plain after the Defeat of ISIS (Chaldean Patriarchate of Babylon)
• Chaldean Patriarch regrets emigration of Iraqi Christians (CWN, 7/3)