Iraq's long-repressed Assyrian population faces "systematic violence" in post-Saddam Iraq and needs better protection, the former head of the worldwide Anglican Church said.
Lord George Carey, who stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002, joined members of London's Assyrian community to warn that ethnic cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq had worsened since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The mainly-Christian Assyrians, who speak Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, have been brutally repressed for many decades in largely Muslim Iraq.
Things have not been better since the March 2003 US-led war to unseat Saddam, Carey said.
"In recent months and years churches and monasteries have been attacked and people have been killed," he said.
"In one case a young man was kidnapped and beheaded. We are talking about terrible atrocities which would undermine any community.
"These are issues of human rights and abuse of people which we have to be aware of. It is systematic violence against Assyrian people, driving them out of their homes and pillaging them.
"It is putting pressure upon them to get them to leave."
Mark Seddon, who is organising a campaign to raise awareness of the Assyrians' situation, called for their rights to be enshrined in a new Iraqi constitution.
"There does appear to be a degree of ethnic cleansing going on now," he said.