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Christians in Iraq

Of course I agree with that. I was about to say that I have some personal experience of visiting Iraq and talking to such people. They are often targeted because they are perceived as having wealth, although they are not particularly wealthy. They want to go on living in Iraq, because they have businesses there and want to get on with their lives. They are not economic migrants, because they do not want to leave Iraq. From talking to them, I have no doubt that they are genuine refugees. I visited Iraq in September as a guest of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, which is the main party representing Christians in Iraq with about 80 per cent. of their vote. I had an opportunity to visit northern Iraq; I think that I was probably one of the first British MPs to go around the villages of the Nineveh plain, just north of Mosul, and up into northern Kurdistan to visit villages close to the Turkish border. I had many packed meetings in villages in the Nineveh plains and in the mountains south of the border. I think that I am one of the few British MPs to have penetrated into that part of Iraq, so I have a story to tell.