The head of Australia's Iraqi Christians has called for international forces to be deployed to protect the religious community from jihadists in his homeland and said US plans for narrowly-focused air strikes were inadequate.
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Speaking hours before reports of the US's first strikes on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant artillery targets, Dr Intesar Naoum, the president of the Iraqi Australian Christian Association, which represents about 330 Iraqi Christian families, also joined the leader of Canberra's Anglicans to urge an increased Australian refugee intake to protect Christians persecuted by the extremist group.
Dr Naoum said US plans announced on Friday to launch air strikes to protect US citizens in the northern town of Erbil and aid the stranded Yazidi ethnic minority on Mount Sinjar did not go far enough.
"That’s what all the [Iraqi Christian] churches are saying, that they have to send forces, they have to have some international forces to protect these people," Dr Naoum said.
"Not only America, even Australia and other countries, when they went to overthrow Saddam because of what he did to some Shiite people - why won’t they do the same thing for the Christians?"
A Sydney-based civil engineer, Dr Naoum left Iraq in the early 1980s and said the recent persecution of Iraqi Christians - part of a systematic attack on religious minorities which has seen hundreds of thousands flee their homes - was the worst he had known.
"Before [the US-led 2003] invasion there was probably one million Christians, now there’s about 100,000," he said.
"At this rate, within a few years the Christians will disappear from Iraq."
Last week the Anglican Bishop for Canberra and Goulburn, Stuart Robinson, published an open letter which called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to increase the government's intake of refugees as a result of the religious violence.
On Friday the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, told an Anglican news service that a five-year-old boy he had baptised had been cut in half by ISIL militants during this week's capture of the Christian village of Qaraqosh.
Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Scott Morrison told Fairfax Media there were more than 4000 Special Humanitarian Programme resettlement places available for those in desperate circumstances each year, and more than 1000 Syrians had received Australian protection visas last financial year.
“My department is closely monitoring the situation and considering options under the offshore humanitarian programme to assist the victims of this crisis,” Mr Morrison said.
Australia’s overall humanitarian visa program has been set at 13,750 places this financial year, the same as last year and down from 20,000 in 2012-13. Iraqi nationals were the largest group in the offshore component of the 2012-13 program.
