Film exposing ISIS genocide against Iraqi Christians debuts tonight

  • Written by:

Chad Selweski
Dumb pictures. Great captions.
A documentary film detailing the horrors endured by Iraqi Christians at the hands of ISIS extremists debuts tonight in suburban Detroit and then will be shown in the coming weeks in New York City, San Diego and Chicago.
Vanessa Denha-Garmo and two other Iraqi Christian Chaldeans from the Detroit area created the film after feeling betrayed because the ISIS killings and depopulation efforts were not labeled by world leaders as a form of genocide.

“It saddens me that we can never have (the) country that we deserve,” Denha-Garmo told the news site Detroit Unspun.

Just days before the film’s unveiling, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a change in U.S. policy and declared that ISIS was guilty of genocide against the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Iraq.

“This is very important and gives those persecuted hope. It also puts pressure on political leaders to hold ISIS accountable,” said Denha-Garmo, a community activist and a Warren Consolidated school board member.

Based on the documentary, “Marked: The Untold Story of the Iraqi Christians, which premieres at 7 p.m. at the Maple Theater in Bloomfield Hills, Detroit Unspun lays out the gruesome story of ISIS brutality:

ISIS has driven many from the villages and towns they occupied for generations. Towns populated by Christians are now completely devoid of them. In attempts to flee, 40,000 have become trapped in the Shingal Mountains. Thousand have died of exposure. Thousands more have been killed by ISIS.

As recently as March 12 of this year, Christian books were publicly burned. Killing continues to be a daily event.

When ISIS captured the city of Mosul on June 10, 2014, it began driving out the Christians. It marked Christian homes with the red letter “N,” for “Nazarene,” then confiscated their homes and exiled their owners. Now no Christians remain in Mosul and city’s 45 churches, monasteries and cemeteries have been destroyed, occupied, shuttered or converted to mosques. In what might be the greatest insult of all, many were converted to headquarters for their ISIS persecutors. All water and electricity has been cut off and Mosul is now under Sharia law.

The film is scheduled to begin a tour of churches and schools across the country. New York, San Diego and Chicago are first because of their large Chaldean and Assyrian populations. The birthplace of the documentary, the Detroit tri-county area, has the largest Chaldean population in the U.S.

The filmmakers hope that the film will provide a boost to charities such as Helpiraq.org, which supply teachers, medical care and basic household items to Iraqi Christian refugee families.

Tickets for tonight’s premiere are available online through Neptix.com or by calling 248-538-9903.

Photo by Stivan Shany/Detroit Unspun.

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