Perspective: Minorities living tormented days under sectarian violence

Assyrians are a non-Arab, Semitic, and Christian people whose ancestral homeland includes parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In Iraq, they are concentrated primarily in Baghdad, Mosul, and villages in the northwest. Iraqi Assyrians primarily belong to the Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian) and to the Chaldean Church (Catholic).

BAGHDAD, 4 January (IRIN) - Like other minority members in Iraq, Mardon Matrood, a 44-year-old Assyrian shopkeeper in Baghdad, has had enough of the country's sectarian violence.

"Minorities in Iraq are targeted by insurgents and militias, who want us out of the country as they promote what they call the 'cleansing of Iraq, of non-Muslim communities'," said Matrood who is living with his family of six in an abandoned government building.

Four months ago Matrood's family failed to pay a ransom of US $50,000 to kidnappers who had abducted his nephew. The nephew was later found dead.

"We are a poor family…we couldn't pay [the ransom money] and after two weeks we were informed that the police had found his body near a mosque in Adhamiyah district (northern Baghdad). It was totally mangled, burned and tortured," Matrood said.

Spiralling sectarian violence has threatened the decades-long peaceful coexistence in Iraq between members of different religions, sects and tribes. Now Sunni and Shi'ite extremists are targeting minorities in a bid to force them out of the country.

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