Iraq: Religious and Ethnic Minorities

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak in the gap and I will not detain your Lordships long. I am delighted that it is the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry who brings this Question to our attention. The city, diocese and cathedral of Coventry have very long, historic and rich relationships with Iraq, and have even provided a vicar of Baghdad in the past, which is quite an achievement if you think about it. I hope that when Coventry is the City of Culture, and we are all flocking to see its riches, some way will perhaps be found to increase the awareness of the visitors coming through of this dimension of Coventry’s corporate life and its international relations. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in a debate that is led from that city.

I do not have much to say except to endorse what has been said. The terrible things that have happened historically to Iraq, such as Saddam and his Baathist, pan-Arab attempt to coerce, in the Middle East in general, support for a movement that would have brought its own destruction on many.

Then there was the Iran/Iraq war, with all its folly and loss of life; the use of chemical weapons, which brought its own victims; the virtual elimination of the habitat and many of the Marsh Arabs. I would add to the list the United Nations sanctions, which were not hugely successful—500,000 children were said to have died because of how Saddam Hussein administered those sanctions. Then there were the events of 2003 and Daesh immediately afterwards.

What a litany of disaster and destruction that represents. What terrible pictures we see on our television screens of inexorable suffering and the destruction of habitats and cities, with buildings hollowed out. How on earth will it be rebuilt? I am glad to hear of some of the efforts that will be made in that direction.

This debate is about honouring the presence of Christians and asking that, as a minority—an indigenous minority who have lived in that part of the world for so long—their plight should be recognised and that we should do our best to find the right way to support them as the future unfolds.

That is not an easy task. We are told that 3% of the people of Iraq are from non-Muslim faith groups. Is that already too small a base to suppose that it can be regenerated and find self-sustainment in the way that the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, described? Then we have the other difficulty of perception. Any attempts we make must be so nuanced. Perhaps the people of Coventry know more about this than anyone. Christians, for all that they have been there for 2,000 years, are still perceived as, or at least called, instruments of Western imperialism because of the way that the industrial-military takeover of Christianity has allowed people in countries such as Iraq to typify Christianity as belonging to the devil.

We must just hope that ways can be found for the wisdom of Solomon, and thank everybody, especially the right reverend Prelate, for bringing these matters to our attention today.