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By JACK HEALY – “TENNA, Iraq — Iraq’s dwindling Christians, driven from their homes by attacks and intimidation, are beginning to abandon the havens they had found in the country’s north, discouraged by unemployment and a creeping fear that the violence they had fled was catching up to them.

Their quiet exodus to Turkey, Jordan, Europe and the United States is the latest chapter of a seemingly inexorable decline that many religious leaders say tolls the twilight of Christianity in a land where city skylines have long been marked by both minarets and church steeples. Recent assessments say that Iraq’s Christian population has now fallen by more than half since the 2003 American invasion, and with the military’s departure, some Christians say they lost a protector of last resort.

Their flight is felt in places like the wind-scoured village of Tenna, which has sheltered dozens of Christian migrants over the past nine years. The families fleeing Baghdad’s death squads and bombings found safety here beneath the hulking mountains, but little else besides poverty, boredom and cold. Villagers estimate that half of the 50 or so Christian homes are now empty, their families abroad.

Walid Shamoon, 42, wants to be the next to leave. He said he left Iraq’s capital in January 2011 after a confrontation with Shiite militia members set off a nightmare of escalating death threats and an attempt on his life. A brother had already been killed in a mortar attack six years earlier, so he said he quit his contract job with the Australian Embassy, giving up a $1,500 monthly salary, and came here.

These days, all he can think about is his application to emigrate to Arizona.

‘This is not a life,’ he said one recent afternoon, as a blizzard raced down from the mountains. ‘There is no improvement. There is no work.’

Many of the people now struggling in Iraq’s Kurdish north came in the wake of a suicide attack in Baghdad at Our Lady of Salvation Church in October 2010. It was the single worst assault on Iraq’s Christians since the war began, one that left 50 worshipers and 2 priests dead and that turned the church into a charnel house of scorched pews and shattered stained glass.

Christian families in Baghdad grabbed clothing, cash and a few other provisions and headed north for the Christian communities along the Nineveh plain and Kurdistan’s three provinces. They joined tens of thousands of other Christians from the capital, Mosul and other cities who traced similar arcs after earlier attacks and assassination campaigns.” Read more.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has intensified its crackdown on Iranian Christians during recent weeks. This has resulted in the arrest of a number of Christians in Ahwaz, Shiraz, Esfahan and Kermanshah. (The interview is concerning this issue).

In this regard, a reporter of Hrana (Human Rights activists’ news agency) has conducted an interview with the head of Iranian Christian news agency, Mohabat News, Saman Kamvar.

The following is a transcription of that interview:

Mr. Kamvar, as you know, groups of Christian citizens were arrested in major cities like Ahwaz, Esfahan and Shiraz. What do you think is the reason for the increased crackdown and opposition by the regime towards religious minorities, especially Christians in Iran?

These hardships against religious minorities come following the mono-dimensional view of the regime towards the political, cultural and religious issues. Their definitions of alien and non-alien are getting more restricted and more groups of people are being considered aliens. For many years it was Baha’is whose rights were being violated more than others. However, more and more violations of rights are being applied against Christians, Sufis and Shi’ite Muslims who believe in a different kind of Shi’ite faith. Today, evangelical Christians, dissident ayatollahs, Baha’is and Sunni Muslims are all under pressure, threat and terror by the Islamic Regime of Iran.

On the other hand, the ruling regime of Iran seeks its legitimacy from religion. So, it wants religion to support its legitimacy. Today, the regime of Iran crackdowns on Christians, especially Christian converts, for it is observing the growth of Christianity like never before. This fact has made them concerned. In conclusion we can say that unfortunately, the regime cannot tolerate other thoughts. What this religious regime tries to demonstrate is that there is only one legitimate religion and all other religions are illegitimate. Read more…

“Gunmen shot dead three Christians in Nigeria near the flashpoint city of Jos, hours after 10 people were killed in a suicide bombing and related violence at a church, an official said Monday.

In a separate incident in the northern city of Kano, gunmen in a car opened fire early Monday on a police station that has been the target of several attacks, wounding two officers, according to residents.

The gunmen near Jos struck late Sunday in a village south of the city where Christian-Muslim tensions ran high after the church attack, state government spokesman Pam Ayuba told AFP, though the two attacks were not thought to be linked.

‘Unknown gunmen, in an apparent ambush late Sunday, waylaid and shot dead three people and injured three others — all Christians — in Chugwi village,’ Ayuba said.

Such violence has occurred repeatedly in and around Jos, located in the middle belt region of Africa’s most populous nation between the mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

Clashes between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups in the area have killed thousands in recent years.

‘We suspect that the attackers were herdsmen. They left with the handsets of those killed and called numbers on their phones to alert their (the victims’) relations that they were responsible for the killings,’ he said from the scene of the attack.

Ayuba, who is a native of the Christian village, said no arrests have been made. The victims included two brothers aged 25 and 30, he said.

Three other people at Dogo Garba, a nearby hamlet, were wounded by the same gunmen and were taken to a nearby government hospital for treatment, he added.” Read more.