Iraq Christians face 'bleak future'
(CNN) -- It's a bittersweet Christmas season for Joseph Kassab, who grew up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and now lives in Detroit, Michigan. Tempering the season's joy is his concern for fellow Iraqi Christians, who have endured killings, displacement and daily intimidation.
Christians in Iraq face a "bleak future," said Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, a nonprofit group that helps Iraqi Christians.
"We are heading for a demise," he said. "It's getting to the point where it might be an ethnic cleansing in the future."
A recent U.S. government report focused on the plight of Iraq's Christian minority. U.S. diplomats and legislators are worried, too.
"I think the Christians are caught in the middle of a horrible situation," said U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat of Assyrian and Armenian ancestry.
She said Iraqi Christians are suffering as a result of "religious cleansing," and she has urged more help for minorities who have fled their homes in Iraq.
The Iraqi government has worked to be inclusive and accepting toward Christians, but daily intimidation has cowed the Christian community, with crosses removed from churches, priests afraid to wear their clerical garb, the faithful reluctant to attend church, and churches hiring private security guards.
Iraq's Christian population has fallen from as many as 1.4 million in 2003 to between 500,000 and 700,000 more recently, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
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