The Disappearing People by Stephen M. Rasche

Author:Stephen M. Rasche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

The headmaster then took us a short distance away to the school for girls, where the tour was a repeat finding of the conditions from the other school buildings and grounds.

Out back on the sidewalk now, finished with the pictures, we talked. If the people would help, enough rooms could be cleared and cleaned to open the schools on time, in two weeks. The electricity was not so critical; the window shutters could be opened, and there would be plenty of light. The headmaster was concerned about the water, though. Something needed to be done. He could not open without water.

As we walked back to the church, Bassim spoke.

“This work, this is not right. Your government, they cannot do anything about this?” he asked me.

“They say that this responsibility belongs to the UN, and the UN is their trusted partner. Really, when we try to tell them these things, they do not want to hear it from us.”

We walked on a bit further, the sun now going low and the shadows beginning to provide some cover along the sidewalk.

“I will send these pictures back to our friends in the US anyhow,” I said. “I will speak again there soon. We will see.”

* * *

By October 3, 2017, I was back in Washington, DC, seated in a hearing room at the Rayburn Office Building. I testified as a witness on behalf of the Church before the House Foreign Affairs Committee regarding the status of the return of Christians to the Nineveh Plain and, in particular, the status surrounding US and UN aid policy and implementation. Testifying alongside me, among others, was former Congressman Frank Wolf, (R) of Virginia, a long-time fighter for oppressed minorities around the world who had recently come back from a fact-finding mission in northern Iraq, during which we had met and conferred several times. I had testified similarly a year earlier in September of 2016, at that time simply trying to bring attention to the urgency of the issue, the work we were trying to do, who was funding it and who, including the US and the UN, was not. Returning again to provide an update, among the supplemental evidence I had submitted as part of my testimony, were the pictures of the schools from Teleskof which I had managed to enter into the record just ahead of the deadline. Addressing my remarks to the chairman, Congressman Chris Smith (R) of New Jersey, excerpts of the testimony from myself and Congressman Wolf went as follows:3

Mr. SMITH. I would now ask that Mr. Rasche begin his testimony. I would point out that when Mr. Rasche testified almost a year ago to the day, September 22nd, before us he said, ‘‘It is no exaggeration to say without these private donors’’—and he pointed out the Knights of Columbus, Aid to the Church in Need, Caritas of Italy, had provided some $26 million at that point—‘‘the situation for Christians in northern Iraq would have collapsed and the vast majority of these

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