Iraqi Christian refugees are forced to sign a document to support the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraqi Christian refugees are forced to sign a document to support the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan. (Fides).

A fair number of Christian Assyrians, Chaldean and Syrian displaced, who took refuge in the city of Dohuk after their villages were conquered by the jihadists of the Islamic State (Daesh), were forced to sign a petition in recent days in support of the proclamation of an independent Kurdish State in Iraqi Kurdistan. This was reported by local sources, consulted by Agenzia Fides. Ankawa.com. site also publishes a facsimile of the signature collection form, with a space to register the identity card and mobile phone number.

The petition, addressed to the government of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, is divided into four points: In addition to state the support owed to the Kurdish Peshmerga militia and Masud Barzani, President of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, it asks the Kurds to speed up the release of Mosul by jihadi forces and prefigures the transformation of the Province of Nineveh (Mosul as capital) in the autonomous region within Iraqi Kurdistan, transformed de facto in independent Kurdish State.

The news of the petition provoked alarmed reactions even among the political representatives supported by militant Chaldeans, Syriacs and Assyrians. Christian politician Imad Youkhana, a member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (Zowaa) and member of the Iraqi Parliament, urged the authorities of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan to open an "urgent investigation" to clarify who inspired and organized the collection of signatures, stressing that the demands of the petition, in a serious moment lived in the region, help to increase the division and further undermine the peaceful coexistence among the different components of the Iraqi nation.

While Mosul and much of the Nineveh Plain remain under the control of the jihadists of Daesh, the story of the petition which Christians displaced in Dohik were forced to sign, allows interests and political projects to be half-seen that could point to a fragmentation of the Iraqi national territory.