In this issue of the Prayer Diary we are asking to you to pray for our needs at Jubilee Action. There is also a need to pray for christians in Iraq as they are suffering persecution. The letter writing this month is about this grave issue in Iraq, so please take action and send the letter to your MP's.

1st-31st December 2008

We are really excited that the projects in India and the Philippines have reached a state of self-sustainability, the work these projects have done and will continue doing is amazing; so many children have been transformed by the work or our partners.

We are looking forward to the future and the possibility of working alongside new partners. We are looking at grass roots projects that need lots of assistance and development. Of course our focus will be rescuing vulnerable children, as it always has been, and unfortunately there are still lots of children who need our help which you, as a Jubilee Action supporter, allow us to provide.

This means we are now engaged in a process of collecting project information from all over the world, trying to asses those that are most in need of our resources and that can progress. So please help us by praying about this process, we are really keen to seek God’s will in this.

Please Pray:

1)    That the team at Jubilee Action will have the wisdom and discernment to know which projects to support

2)    That God will give us the knowledge to know the best way to develop our current projects.

3)    That the economic crisis will not affect our ability to provide vital care to children around the world.

4)    Please continue to pray for all children that are at risk of their human rights being violated. Please also take a moment to remember everyone affected by the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dear (name of MP),

I am extremely concerned by reports of the escalating attacks against Christians in Iraq. Since late September 2008 violent attacks by Islamic extremists against Christians in Mosul, northern Iraq, have resulted in the deaths of at least 13 Christians and the mass displacement of over 2000 Christian families who have fled the city.  Today, there are only about 600,000 Christians left in Iraq, compared to 1.2 million in 2003, as a result of Iraq's unrelenting and intense anti-Christian violence, which began shortly after the U.S-British military intervention of 2003. The AssyrianChaldeans make up over 95% of Iraq’s Christians. Since 2003 more than 700 Iraqi Christians have been murdered. Before the Mosul murders there were already over 12,000 internally displaced Christian families in northern Iraq and the killings have worsened the major humanitarian disaster facing Iraq's Christians. According to a Washington Times report dated 26 October, 2008, on October 17, Iraqi security forces arrested six men in connection with the targeted killings of Christians in Mosul, and found four of them had ties back to the Kurdish Regional Government militia, not Al Qaeda. The Kurdish Regional Government is dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). On October 29, 2008, Gulf News reported, “ ‘Investigations have been completed and proved the involvement of Kurdish militias in the displacement and killing of Christians,’ Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki reportedly said during a discussion with Iraqi lawmakers, according to Osama Al Nojaifi, a deputy in the Iraqi parliament."

Iraq's leading Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), have repeatedly called for a self-governing province to be granted to the AssyrianChaldeans, which is linked to the central government in Baghdad, is situated in and around the Nineveh Plains and includes the Telkepeh, Hamdaniya and Bashika Districts, and is governed by the AssyrianChaldeans and other ethnic groups living in that area, these lands forming part of the ancient ancestral homeland of the AssyrianChaldeans and which are still heavily populated by them. The ADM have consistently received over 80% of the votes from Iraqi Christians at every parliamentary election, which indicates that the majority of Iraq's Christians want a self-governing province for the AssyrianChaldeans. This province would function as a much needed place of safety for Iraq's Christians and would also encourage many of the thousands of Christians who fled Iraq and are living in poverty in neighbouring countries to return and live there. It would greatly enhance the security of  Iraq’s Christians to be granted this province, thereby encouraging what’s left of Iraq’s Christian community to remain in that country rather than fleeing abroad as so many others have. Instead of entrusting their security to incompetent or indifferent authorities to manage, the AssyrianChaldeans will be empowered to oversee their own security arrangements by having this province.

I urge you to write to the British Foreign Secretary, urging that the Foreign Office actively and urgently encourage the Iraqi Government to support the establishment of a self-governing province in and around the Nineveh Plains which is directly linked to Iraq’s central government and jointly governed by the AssyrianChaldeans and other ethnic groups living there. I further request that you urge the Foreign Office to call on Iraq’s Government to conduct an independent, thorough and transparent investigation into the alleged involvement of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the targeted killings of Christians in Mosul and to fully and widely publicise all of this investigations' findings. I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,