Hundreds of people rallied together at Centennial Plaza in El Cajon in a cry for justice and help for the Christians in Iraq. Their journey began at 4:00 p.m. at St. Michael’s Chaldean Catholic Church with a rally at the four corners of Magnolia Ave. and Main Street, then up to City Hall for prayer services and speeches. The Peace Walk: End the Christian Genocide in Iraq was meant to help stop the bloodshed in the Middle East.
Hundreds of people rallied together at Centennial Plaza in El Cajon in a cry for justice and help for the Christians in Iraq. Their journey began at 4:00 p.m. at St. Michael’s Chaldean Catholic Church with a rally at the four corners of Magnolia Ave. and Main Street, then up to City Hall for prayer services and speeches. The Peace Walk: End the Christian Genocide in Iraq was meant to help stop the bloodshed in the Middle East.
Mark Arabo, humanitarian and businessman, said thousands participated in the march, many coming and going as they walked the streets of El Cajon. He said the reason for the rally was to continue to bring awareness and an urgency of help of the Iraqi Christians suffering in the midst of today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
“Today we walk for the people in Iraq,” he said. “To bring a voice to the voiceless, a state to the stateless.”
Arabo said he is helping by working with France, Australia and New Zealand to give these Iraqi Christians asylum, and is in talks with many other nations around the world.
“We need to find a home for these people,” he said. “The world has a moral obligation to act. This is a full-blown holocaust. I am trying to help lead the way and I will not stop until we find a solution and a safe haven for the people in Iraq that are suffering through the atrocities.”
He said much has been done already with the passage of House Resolution 683 that focuses on the urgent need to protect religious minorities in Iraq from persecution and with the United Nations declaring the highest-level humanitarian emergency in Iraq.
“We will do everything we can do to stop those that support ISIS,” he said.
Arabo said his appeal is to the world’s human conscience to wake up human hearts to see that this is nothing less than genocide and that more help is needed to save the Christians in Iraq.
“They are not looking to stay, or go back to their own country,” he said. “They are looking for a safe place to live and practice their Christian beliefs in freedom.
Minorityhf.org has received hundreds of phone calls with people asking what they can do, donating money to help and people offering up their homes, clothing and any resources that they have to help, said Arabo.
