After my morning surgeries yesterday I attended
the Christmas Lunch organised by Dundee Conservatives. The guest speaker was
Struan Stevenson MEP, who gave a very interesting and passionate talk on,
amongst other subjects, Kurdistan and in particular the gradual erosion of
Iraq's ancient Christian community which has now dwindled from 1.5 million to
an estimated 300,000.
Struan, who chairs the European Parliament's Delegation
for Relations with Iraq, travelled to Erbil in Kurdistan at the end of
November, where he met with the Kurdistan Regional Government's President
Masoud Barzani and Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. Struan told us that one of
the oldest Christian communities in the world, which can trace its origins back
to the time of Christ, now faces extinction because of bombings, assassinations
and kidnappings.
He talked about the plight of refugees from
the civil war in Syria and the need for aid and said that the EU must stop
sending financial aid to Baghdad, where it simply disappears. Instead it must
be given directly to the NGOs who are actively helping the Syrian refugees in
Iraq.
Struan has represented Scotland in the
European Parliament since 1999. He is standing down at next year’s European Parliament
election. Ian Duncan, who won a ballot of Scottish Conservative Party members,
is to replace Struan at the top of the Scottish Conservative Party list.
