Web streaming from GA plenary
threatens to put Iraqi Christians at risk
By Carmen Fowler, The Layman, July 9, 2010
Before approving an overture related to the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, the General Assembly dealt with one more amendment that sought to restore language that the committee had stricken. The debated sentence includes direct reference to an Iraqi Christian effort to provide for young children. The organization received a 2010 grant from the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering.
As the identification of Christians in Iraq can be an issue of life and death, the committee was asked not to include the name of the organization. “Please don’t put these people at further risk,” one commissioner pleaded.
However, the name of the organization was used several times on the floor of the Assembly, where people of all faiths are notably seated. Further, the name of the organization appeared in the PCUSA’s live streaming video of the plenary session and is posted as a part of the business on pc-biz for all the world to witness. How do these acts not equally put the Iraqi Christians and the children they serve at risk?
(Editor’s Note: The Layman is not using the name of the organization here respecting the fact that this web-site is accessed worldwide.)
Through its action on the overture on Iraq which originated in the Presbytery of Providence, the PCUSA GA urged the U.S. government to withdraw all U.S. combat troops, armed forces and defense contractors from Iraq by the end of 2011.
The GA wants further assurance that the U.S. government will not establish permanent military bases in Iraq and will make available sufficient funds for the repatriation and resettlement of Iraqi refugees and for the postwar reconstruction of Iraq.
Additionally, the government is called on to “protect civilian populations from harm, particularly in the northern part of Iraq, due to long-standing hostilities among militant, governmental, economic, ethnic, and religious groups; and carry out its stated policy of engaging all sides involved in a conflict by following that policy in order to find peaceful ways to resolve their differences.”
The question was raised as to how the committee imagined that the U.S. government might both protect civilian population in northern Iraq and remove all armed forces from Iraq and have no bases. The commissioner asked, “How shall we protect civilians if we have no military presence there?”
Dr. Victor Makari, the PCUSA’s coordinator for the Middle East Office, answered that the committee was persuaded there were other ways that the U.S. government could provide such protection.