The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, has called on Sydney Anglicans to pray for the Iraqi elections this weekend.

“I am sure that our congregations will want to remember the country of Iraq in prayer this Sunday, that there will be a peaceful and fair outcome of the election process," he said.

The persecution of Iraq's Christian minority has been accelerating in the lead up to the January 30 election.

In the past few months churches have been firebombed and bishops kidnapped. There have been reports of acid thrown in the faces of women who were not wearing veils and shootings of workers in video and liquor stores in Christian communities.

International observers claim the protection of the minority Christian community is a key measure of the success of the democratic experiment in Iraq.
About 40,000 Christians have fled Iraq since August, and the situation "has gotten worse', religious liberty activist Nina Shea told Baptist Press.
The persecution "is accelerating', said Ms Shea, director of the Washington-based Center for Religious Freedom and vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. “They’re accelerating it now because this is an opportunity to drive [the Christians] out.”

Just over a million Iraqis are Christians out of a population of 24 million. More than 80 per cent of Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans who are part of the Roman Catholic Church.
In a joint statement released this week, representatives of the various Churches in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, highlighted the importance of voting for the Christian community.

“Voting is a national and religious duty that contributes to the birth of a new Iraq, for everyone: an Iraq which is able to develop in vitality,” they said.

The election will result in a transitional national assembly that will write a constitution and select a president in the next year.

Iraqis in Australia vote today (Friday, January 27). Australia is one of 11 countries outside Iraq where voting will take place.