Kirkuk, thanks to the Iraqi Church, which promotes "Bridges for Peace"
Kirkuk (AsiaNews) - The Iraqi central government and the
governor of Kurdistan should "contribute
to solving problems, rather than contribute to complicate them", because
their decisions can have a "negative impact" particularly in the
service sectors of the economy and on security.
This
is one of the seven points of the document signed yesterday in Kirkuk -
Northeast Iraq - by more than 50 Iraqi intellectuals, political leaders and
religious, during the conference "Building Bridges for Peace"
sponsored by the local archdiocese. An
event that has generated optimism and hope for the future, says Mgr. Louis
Sako, because only thanks to "diversity" can you really live in "dialogue"
and "respect for the rights of others." Hopes
which are also shared by other participants and signatories, including the
Kurdish parliamentarian Sheik Lattif Guli, who said: "Now, thanks to the
Church, we have become 50 bridges for peace."
During
the forum yesterday in the large conference room inside the Chaldean archbishop's
residence, discussions focused on political, social, religious reconciliation in
the presence of prominent local and national personalities. After
the meeting, over 50 attendees signed a document in seven points, to "concretely"
implement the purposes of peace, peaceful coexistence and development of the
whole region.
In
detail, the document states: the first point, the call to "live together
and respect the diverse mosaic" of the city of Kirkuk, according to the
principles of "harmony and respect", and second, to promote a
dialogue because " violence neither
changes nor improves the situation ", the third point, an end to speeches
and initiatives that lead to" hatred, marginalization, exclusion ";
fourth, the hope that we can" by consensus " arrive at the election
of provincial Council members; the fifth
point, solutions to the situation of prisons and a faster and more efficient justice
system; sixth, the appeal "to the central government and the government of
Kurdistan" to "really solve the problems" rather than
"worsen them", the seventh and last the
birth of a "committee" responsible for monitoring compliance with the
"diversity and difference" and that "promotes a concrete
dialogue."
Commenting
yesterday, Msgr. Louis
Sako - Archbishop of Kirkuk and soul of the initiative - expressed cautious
optimism: "Our presence - he explains to AsiaNews - together as one family to build bridges of peace is a
great asset. Thus we can express our unity and brotherhood" . The
bishop warns that we must "accept each other and respect each other"
starting "from our diversity, our legitimate differences". "Dialogue
is born from respect for the rights of others - he adds - to be different in
nationality, culture, language, religion and sex." He
remembers the Gospel of Matthew, in the passage where Christ mentions the law
of the Prophets: "Do unto others - says Mgr. Sako - what you would have
others do unto you. This is the only rule for harmonious coexistence."
Kirkuk, with its 900 thousand inhabitants,
has long been the center of a political-ethnic conflict between Arabs, Kurds
and Turkmen. The
latter would like to annex the area to the Kurdistan
region, but Arabs and Turkmen uphold the link with the Iraqi central
government. The
city has been the scene of several targeted attacks, which struck the Christian
minority on several occasions, and which are exacerbated by an economic
component: the subsoil in the region is rich in oil and gas the exploitation
and control of which is disputed by the different warring factions.
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