Crimes against Humanities because of their Faith

Their stories are hard for to see and heard. I could only imagine what it does to them to be stripped of all human dignity. I can not believe nations of power stand by and do not exercise their power and influence to bring a stop to this human injustice in this day of age. I would like to believe as humans we evolved to a level that what happens to the the most vulnerable of us affects all of us, and it is the responsibility of all of us to correct this injustice.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Is Congress paving the way for a Christian safe zone in Iraq?

An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul, sits inside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Chaldean Church in the province of Ninevah, July 20, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Stringer)

Is Congress paving the way for a Christian safe zone in Iraq?

Can the US Congress help save Middle East Christians from extinction?

Summary⎙ Print A bipartisan effort to denounce an ongoing genocide is picking up steam. That's just the first step.

Author Julian PecquetPosted November 9, 2015

Christian activists are making the unlikely gamble as their yearslong exodus from Syria and Iraq has turned into an outright stampede under the Islamic State (IS). They’re launching a lobbying blitz to get the United States to label their plight a genocide — and create pressure for the subsequent creation of a Christian safe haven in Iraq.

“We are forming a lobby team and trying to raise some money to hire [a] very respected diplomat so we can get more countries involved in this issue,” said Loay Mikhael, head of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council.

“What we are trying to do right here, right now, is we’re trying to push this genocide resolution to be passed by the House or Senate,” he told Al-Monitor. “If that passes, then we can go and speak to people and tell them, OK, the Christians and other minorities face genocide and it’s recognized by the Congress. That means they face atrocities and crimes against humanity, so it’s time to do something for them.”

The genocide measure’s chief sponsor says that’s exactly its purpose.

“The first goal is to elevate international consciousness of the problem,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., told Al-Monitor. “You then create the gateway for a fuller discussion about security concerns, economic and political integration. One of the ideas out there is safety zones guaranteeing security of religious minorities in certain areas."

The resolution, introduced exactly two months ago, had garnered 146 cosponsors as of Nov. 9. It had the support of former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and has been co-sponsored by Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., whose House Foreign Affairs panel is now reviewing the resolution.

The resolution does not spell out a plan for helping the Christians and other minorities, but calls on other countries and the United Nations to follow the US lead and call their slaughter a genocide. It says the world should “collaborate on measures to prevent further war crimes” and prosecute the perpetrators of violence, particularly the forced displacement from the Ninevah Plain, “a historic heartland of Christianity.”

For Mikhael, that means helping the Christians expel IS from the 80 percent of the Ninevah Plain it still occupies.

“If they decided they want to save that area, then OK, train our people, train the Kurds, give them more equipment — or liberate Ninevah Plain for us, and we will protect it,” he said. “Without a safe haven — without international protection for the Ninevah Plain — there will be no Christians living in Iraq anymore.”

The latest effort comes as the number of Christians in Iraq has dwindled from 1.5 million before the US invasion to fewer than 500,000 today. The UN human-rights panel concluded in March that IS actions against Christians and other minorities “may constitute genocide” and Pope Francis used the g-word during his July 10 trip to Bolivia.

"Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus," Francis said. "In this third world war, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is taking place, and it must end."

The campaign for a safe zone for Syrian and Iraqi Christians is being spearheaded by several rights groups, including A Demand for Action and In Defense of Christians working with coalitions of Christian churches in the Middle East. The proposal for the creation of an autonomous province in the ancient Christian Assyrian homeland in the Ninevah Plain dates back at least five years, but has gained new traction as various Christian denominations have come together in the face of the IS threat.

“We do hope to see some kind of means by which these communities would have international protection in the region — most likely in Iraq,” said Kristina Olney, head of government relations for IDC. “We are in the process of consulting with our contacts in the region, in Iraq in particular, to come up with a concrete proposal.”

At its first summit last year in Washington, IDC brought together all the Eastern rite patriarchs — in the flesh or represented by their bishops — for the first time since the Council of Florence in the 15th century. Bringing Iraqi leaders together on the ground is proving just as challenging.

In a blow to advocates of an autonomous Christian zone, the leader of the Assyrian Democratic Movement in Iraq denounced the idea in an interview last week with Al-Monitor. Yonadam Kanna, who is also a member of the Iraqi parliament, said the Council of Ministers’ decision in January 2014 to split the existing Ninevah province in two — since put on hold by the IS onslaught — was not a precursor to autonomy for the Ninevah Plain area.

“Those who made such demands are people outside of Iraq, while we — who work hard in parliament — espouse the principles prescribed in Iraq’s constitution and proclaim the importance of living as part of a single homeland that unites Iraqis of all ilk,” Kanna told Al-Monitor. “We further think that calls for the establishment of an autonomous region are racist in nature and serve to isolate us from one another.”

And the governor of Kirkuk, Najmaldin Karim, warned just days later that such a zone could create a “big target” on the backs of Christians.

“I’m telling you, the Christian community is leaving,” Karim told Al-Monitor. “Creating a safe haven — what are you going to create? Those areas are all mixed.”

Mikhael said Kanna’s remarks were disheartening but underscored the need for concerted international action and fresh ideas.

“When we say we want a province or an autonomous region for the Christians in Ninevah Plain, that means we will have our own parliament, a percentage from the Iraqi budget, Christian police forces that can control the area and secure the area,” he said. “We don’t want to be isolated from the other people. We don’t want an independent country.”

Part of the problem, said resolution co-sponsor Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is that the Ninevah Plain itself is disputed. While Christians rely on the Kurds to fight IS and take care of their displaced people in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds themselves may be unwilling to give up their claims — further complicating any plans for a safe haven.

“Yes, this is the goal of some people — I understand it very well. But it’s a very complicated undertaking,” said Eshoo, the only member of Congress of Assyrian descent. “This is not our land. We have to deal with a sovereign government, as stretched and as limited and as troubled as it is. It’s like if someone came to our country and said, you make a 51st state.”

Those concerns may help explain the US government’s apparent reluctance to get involved in the issue.

Congress has passed several laws since 2008 have called on the State Department to assist religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq, but a 2012 Government Accountability Office report found they were sometimes ignored. Last year’s defense bill also urged the Department of Defense to include local security forces protecting Ninevah Plain minorities when allocating assistance under the $1.6 billion Iraq Train and Equip Fund.

Lawmakers vowed to double down.

“We have to do something,” said Fortenberry. “People are dying. Christianity in the Middle East is shattered.”

Why the question of Christian vs. Muslim refugees has become so incredibly divisive

By Michelle Boorstein

Christians make up a tiny percentage of the Syrian refugees the United States has resettled. Is that wrong?

The topic is raging this week, with multiple governors and GOP presidential candidates saying Syrian refugees should be shut out after the Paris attacks by Muslim radicals. President Obama then said it was “shameful” to have a religious test for refugees of war. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he said.

[“Amongst the migrants, there are some terrorists"]

In fact, the role of religion in how refugees are considered and how the United States looks at persecution is more complicated. Religion is considered by both the United Nations and the State Department, which defines a refugee as “someone who has fled from his or her home country and cannot return because he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”

A torrent of other issues also come when refugee status is considered. How severely persecuted is the group? Is their religion the primary factor or are there other issues, such as political or ethnic affiliations that are equally or more significant? Does the group have other options, anywhere to else to go?

Whether the United States works too hard or not hard enough for persecuted Christians overseas has become increasingly explosive in the last decade. In that period, conditions for religious minorities in the Middle East have seriously deteriorated. And in the United States, some religious Americans see hostility in President Obama’s liberalizing policies about birth control and gay rights. Among many of these people, and others, anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise. Some 30 percent of Americans wrongly believe Obama is Muslim.

Advocates for Middle Eastern Christians note that this group is disappearing from the region of Jesus’s birth in the rubble of government chaos in Iraq, Syria and Egypt.

[Would Jesus take in Syrian refugees?]

This week such Americans were jarred by a Yahoo News report that the State Department is about to designate the Islamic State’s assault on the small population of Yazidis in Iraq genocide — a very rare move that could have implications for the United States to hold perpetrators accountable. While other religious minorities from the region, including Christians, are described as severely persecuted for their faith, the Yazidis are described as under a particular kind of siege.

The report suggests the government is influenced by a Nov. 12 paper by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. That paper said the Islamic State “is carrying out a widespread, systematic, and deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” against Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen, Shabak and other minority groups. Of that group, only the Yazidis faced genocide because “the attacks on them were to make sure no future Yazidis would be born. To end them as a people altogether,” Naomi Kikoker, deputy director of the center, told The Post. She cited interviews with residents and said Christians “faced slightly different treatment” if “horrific,” being forced to leave, pay a tax or convert.

That was the first time the museum had declared anything a genocide since 2004, when it used the term for the Darfur region of Sudan.

CONTENT FROM MAKE IN INDIAIndia’s defense sector beckons foreign investors

Military modernization is a top priority for India and a growth opportunity in manufacturing.By Make In India

But the possibility of a State Department proclamation led prominent advocates for Middle Eastern Christians to say it showed bias.

“If true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians — even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria — never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors,” wrote Nina Shea in National Review Nov. 13.

State Department officials who work on this topic were not available for comment for this story. However, last month, Rabbi David Saperstein, the department’s ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, was asked at a news conference about the claim that the West has “abandoned” Middle Eastern Christians.

There are “competing truths,” Saperstein said; a “robust effort” to protect Christians, while at the same time the reality of their imperiled lives.

“There’s no magic button that can fix this. It is — as the president has said, it is going to be long, steady progress here until we can reach the kind of goals that we want. If you’re living there, and you fear for the well-being of your family every day, certainly you’re going to feel like the world isn’t doing enough about it. It’s a paradox. We recognize that reality,” Saperstein said on Oct. 14.

Most refugees who come to the United States are referred through the United Nations. In a State Department briefing earlier in the fall, a department official said less than 2 percent of the Syrian refugees registered to the United States are Christian.

Some advocates who work with Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria say Christians are terrorized in U.N. refugee camps — that should have a better system to protect religious minorities — and thus stay away, living instead with private charities or families while on the move. As a result, the advocates say, they are unfairly excluded from the U.N. process. The United States and the United Nations should also take into consideration more the fact that there aren’t neighboring countries in the Middle East where Christians can easily find community, these advocates say, meaning they should get special consideration in a Christian-majority country like the United States.

“Christians can’t just hop over to another country,” said Johnnie Moore, an evangelical writer who advocates and fundraises for Middle Eastern Christian refugees.

In September, George Carey — former archbishop of Canterbury — wrote that “the Christian community is yet again left at the bottom of the heap.” Carey also said Syrian Christians are unable to safely stay in U.N. camps and that the small minority should be given a special priority by Britain.

“Britain should make Syrian Christians a priority because they are a particularly vulnerable group. Furthermore, we are a Christian nation with an established Church so Syrian Christians will find no challenge to integration. The churches are already well-prepared and eager to offer support and accommodation to those escaping the conflict,” he wrote in The Telegraph.

Chris Seiple, a longtime advocate on international religious freedom who has advised the State Department, said while Muslims have suffered statistically far more from the Islamic State because they are the majority, religious minorities — Christians and Yazidis in particular — are getting disproportionately hit because they are so small.

“They are facing an existential threat that Muslims are not,” said Seiple, whose father, Robert Seiple, was the first U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom at the State Department.

The bigger issue in the Middle East, Chris Seiple said, is the lack of a broad regional strategy that affords protection for religious minorities. In the United States, politics looms, he said.

“The politics of the current situation is that many Christians think Obama is a Muslim. And that they think Obama won’t name the threat [of Muslim extremism] in the name of common sense, and he won’t acknowledge it. Because of those two things, people think he won’t give preference to Christians who are at the end of their line,” he said.

Chris Seiple, who works with groups on the ground in Iraq, said he has personal knowledge of cases in which Christians were not given the same access as other religious minorities at the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq. A lot of what’s said about this topic, he said, is rumor among people who work with refugees. “Everyone is an activist and has their own contacts,” he said.

While some — including Chris Seiple – are concerned about the treatment of Christian refugees, he said the irony is that “the perception abroad is that we’re only concerned about Christians. The United States needs a clearer, better-communicated strategy on how it deals with religious topics around refugees. The way we do this is just as important as the what.”

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit who sits on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom — an independent government commission — said from his work on the ground, the role of religion can get blended in with so many other factors. People of a faith can be safe in one part of a country and not in another. Advocates have different perspectives.

“People have different perceptions and different interests. Clearly in the U.S. many Christians are concerned about their own, that’s natural, but that can’t be government policy,” Reese said. “We have to be concerned about all people who are persecuted because of their religion.”

Friday, November 13, 2015

37 Assyrian Christians released from ISIS captivity

Carey Lodge CHRISTIAN TODAY JOURNALIST 07 November 2015

Reuters

Assyrians hold banners as they march in Beirut, Lebanon, in solidarity with fellow Assyrians abducted by Islamic State fighters in Syria in this February.

Almost 40 Assyrian Christians kidnapped by Islamic State were today released following negotiations by the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East.

The Assyrian Human Rights Network reported that the 37 released were among those who had been abducted from villages along the Khabour River in northern Syria in February. ISIS militants raided the villages at dawn, taking over 200 people as hostages.

In addition to the 37 freed today, a number have already been released, including 22 elderly men and women in August.

The Assyrian Human Rights Network said the captives released today were also elderly, and had been returned to the town of Tel Tamer. It posted a picture showing several people including one woman, who was weeping, and confirmed that all those who had been freed were in good health.

ISIS have now released 88 hostages in total, and negotiations are continuing to secure the freedom of the remaining 124.

Last month, however, militants released a video showing the execution three of the hostages, and threatened to murder those still in captivity if a multi-million dollar ransom was not paid.

Initially, ISIS demanded a ransom fee of around $100,000 per hostage, totalling $23 million. When it became clear that the Assyrian community could not afford it, however, the amount was lowered to between $12-$14 million.

Following the news of the 37 being freed today, A Demand For Action (ADFA), a campaign group for minorities in the Middle East, congratulated the Assyrian Church on its efforts to secure the release of the hostages, and expressed a hope that more would soon be freed.

Diana Yaqco, spokeswoman for ADFA, told Christian Today: "I am so relieved there is movement again and that the Church has made the Assyrian community so proud in the way it has handled the situation under such huge pressure. The church leaders are not politicians or professional negotiators but they have not abandoned anyone."

She continued: "It is sad we are left to fend for ourselves yet again when cries for help have been ignored by many world leaders since the invasion of Mosul which saw our people become beggars in their country. Have you ever felt a stranger in your own home? That is how we feel. Our children deserve a future and it doesn't need to be under IS and their brutality."

In a statement, ADFA said that mother of one of the hostages executed a few weeks ago was released today, and it is believed that she had not been aware of her son's death. "This remains the sad reality for many, as they do not know if their family members are alive still due to the separation," the statement said.

"We remain in touch with relatives of those whom have been kidnapped in places like Sweden. They are still hopeful to see their loved ones released also and have been filtering through photos circulating on social media in hope to find a face they recognise.

"We continue to urge the appropriate governing bodies to intervene where they can to help safely return the remaining hostages. Urgent humanitarian assistance is still required to Iraq & Syria as the internally displaced person's crises deepens."

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/37.assyrians.released.from.isis.captivity/69894.htm

Is Congress paving the way for a Christian safe zone in Iraq?

Can the US Congress help save Middle East Christians from extinction?

Summary⎙ Print A bipartisan effort to denounce an ongoing genocide is picking up steam. That's just the first step.

Author Julian PecquetPosted November 9, 2015

The genocide measure’s chief sponsor says that’s exactly its purpose.

For Mikhael, that means helping the Christians expel IS from the 80 percent of the Ninevah Plain it still occupies.

And the governor of Kirkuk, Najmaldin Karim, warned just days later that such a zone could create a “big target” on the backs of Christians.

“I’m telling you, the Christian community is leaving,” Karim told Al-Monitor. “Creating a safe haven — what are you going to create? Those areas are all mixed.”

Mikhael said Kanna’s remarks were disheartening but underscored the need for concerted international action and fresh ideas.

Those concerns may help explain the US government’s apparent reluctance to get involved in the issue.

Lawmakers vowed to double down.

“We have to do something,” said Fortenberry. “People are dying. Christianity in the Middle East is shattered.”

Friday, November 6, 2015

Middle East attacks on Christians cause for concern

Middle East attacks on Christians cause for concern - Russian ombudsman

Published time: 29 Oct, 2015 15:05

Get short URL

A woman walks inside a damaged church in Maaloula, Syria © Omar Sanadiki

Foreign Ministry’s plenipotentiary for Human Rights says Russia is extremely worried by the threat the current Middle East crisis poses for Christianity, adding that the extremists who launch attacks posing as Muslims were discrediting that religion.

“Today’s situation in the Middle East Region is taking a critical shape, without any exaggeration. Radical extremists are conducting mass executions, destroy Christian churches, force people out of their homes and destroy holy sites with millennia-long history,” Konstantin Dolgov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

The ombudsman said Russian authorities were "in the most serious way concerned about the fate of the 2000-long presence of Christianity in the Middle East" and reminded the journalists that since the beginning of the armed conflict in Syria the numbers of Christian population in this country dropped from 2.2 million to 1.2 million and that the most important Christian holy sites in this country had been attacked or destroyed.

Dolgov stated that the terrorists who used Muslim slogans as a cover for their activities were discrediting this religion. He also added that the outburst of this “malicious phenomenon” could be caused by the activities of various nations outside the Middle East region, especially Western countries pursuing their own interests.

Russian authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church have repeatedly expressed solidarity with people of Christian Faith that suffer from repressions on the part of the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS and ISIL) and other terrorist groups in the region.

In late September this year, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department for relations with secular society, Vsevolod Chaplin, said the Church fully supports Moscow’s plan to render military aid to the Syrian government and added that representatives of other major religions would throw their weight behind the anti-terrorist effort.

“The active position of our country has always been connected with protection of the weak and oppressed, like the Middle East Christians who are now experiencing a real genocide. Russia’s role has always been in protecting peace and justice for all Mideast peoples,” Chaplin said.

Christians in Syria Facing "genocide"

Christians in Syria facing "genocide"

The Syrian flag flies over the Saint Sarkis Armenian Orthodox Church in Damascus. - AFP

(Vatican Radio) The persecution Christians are facing in parts of Syria can be called “genocide,” and the time is now for the rest of the world to come to the aid of the persecuted Church.

John Pontifex, the editor of Aid to the Church in Need’s report “Persecuted and Forgotten? A report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2013-2015,” spoke to Vatican Radio after Pope Francis gave his support to the organization’s efforts to help persecuted Christians during his General Audience on Wednesday.

Listen to the Vatican Viewpoint featuring John Pontifex:

The civil war in Syria – and the rise of the so-called Islamic State – has led to widespread destruction, affecting the entire population of the country. However, Christians have suffered in a particular way.

“For the Christians there is the other dimension of very direct persecution,” explained Pontifex.

“Indeed, we have had reports of what we really can call genocide,” he said. “Christians being put under pressure by being killed, being forced from their homes ,being forced to convert, being forced to pay a jizyah tax - an Islamic tax - and all evidence of Christian culture destroyed: Churches, chapels, crosses sanctuaries.”

Pontifex said the persecution is not happening everywhere in Syria, but is “severe enough” for Aid to the Church in Need to be concerned about a “motivated ethnic cleansing of Christians” from the region. He said this persecution is being perpetrated not only by the so-called Islamic State, but also by other Islamist militant groups that have the objective of “clearing the place of Christians.”

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is providing basic help – food, shelter and medicine – to Christians both in the safer areas of Syria, as well as to refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and other countries.

“This is not just emergency help, there is also help for pastoral support: Priests, Sisters, and others who are in great need at this time”- Pontifex explained - “but of course the emergency aid which the Holy Father has highlighted by reference to ACN’s need to help in Syria and elsewhere is at the forefront of all our activities at this time.”

Pontifex also told Vatican Radio that all Christians, and others who believe in religious freedom, have a duty to make their voices heard in support of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

“We need to stand up for religious freedom,” he said.

“We need to stand up for the right of Christians to remain in their place of origin - in the birthplace of Christianity, the cradle of Christianity,” Pontifex continued. “The threat to the survival of Christianity in the region is very grave, and the moment [to act] is now.”

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/11/04/christians_in_syria_facing_genocide/1184371