The Australian: Church fear over Syria refugee intake

The Australian
November 21, 2015 12:00AM
Dennis Shanahan

Archbishop Anthony Fisher: ‘Groups like the Yazidis, Christians and Zoroastrians are at peril of extinction in the Middle East at the hands of Daesh.’

The Turnbull government’s plan to take a majority of the 12,000 extra Syrian refugees from persecuted Christian groups and other religious minorities in the ­Middle East is in danger of being derailed.

Christian leaders fear they are being blocked from recommending persecuted people to be part of the Australian intake ­because of confusion over the ­Immigration Department’s selection process and the selection rules of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Government sources believe drafting of the September 9 decision has undermined the clear intention of cabinet, which was to concentrate on the most persecuted groups who could not return to their homes in Syria. These included Christians, Yazidis and Jews, who would form the bulk of the extra refugees accepted.

A requirement included in the decision — that the UNHCR had to register the refugees — meant those who are displaced in Syria or living in tents or with family members outside the official UN camps were not registered.

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, who has written to Malcolm Turnbull about the issue, expressed concern yesterday that the bulk of the ­refugees would be Muslims rather than the persecuted non-Muslim groups the government ­indicated in September, such as Christians, Yazidis, Zoroastrians and Jews.

“The community and the Oriental Christians are feeling very anxious and can’t get clarity on what the Australian government is trying to achieve,” Archbishop Fisher told The Weekend Australian last night.

The Archbishop said Islamic State, also known as Daesh, wanted to “exterminate or enslave” Christians as part of its belief in the terrorist Caliphate.

“Groups like the Yazidis, Christians and Zoroastrians are at peril of extinction in the Middle East at the hands of Daesh,” Archbishop Fisher said.

Church concerns about the Australian intake emerged as the US House of Representatives voted to suspend a program giving Syrian refugees safe haven in the US, a move Democrats slammed as giving in to xenophobia after the Paris attacks. The vote yesterday on the Republican legislation, which seeks to impose more stringent security provisions on screening of Iraqi and Syrian refugees, easily had the required support to pass. The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.

Archbishop Fisher said there were mixed messages coming from the federal government and the Immigration Department, which put in doubt the government’s initial request at a meeting on September 9 for all the churches to nominate refugees who were persecuted and “ready for family reunion or quick integration into Australian society”.

The Immigration Department has received several thousand ­applications and a handful of families, including Muslims and Christians, have already arrived in Australia.

In the wake of the latest Islamic State terror attacks in Paris, including attackers who flowed in to France with Syrian refugees, there have been public calls to stop the intake completely or limit it to Christians.

Concern among Christian groups, particularly the Oriental Christian churches, which include the Copts, Melkites, ­Antiochian Orthodox, Maronite and Assyrians, has spiked as evidence flows from the US that the UNHCR will not give Christians priority, and has indicated a majority of the refugees going to the US will be Muslim.

Eastern Christian Welfare Australia, which represents 12 churches and is trying to identify genuine refugees, said last night it believed the current system was failing to target “vulnerable minorities who cannot obtain UNHCR registration; who do not live in refugee camps; and who do not have immediate family members to propose them”.

In a statement to The Weekend Australian, the welfare group said Christians were afraid to go to the official refugee camps because they were predominantly filled with Muslims and had also been infiltrated by the terror fighters.

“Vulnerable Christian and minority refugees who are not registered with the UNHCR or who do not have immediate family members in Australia are caught up in the bureaucracy,” the statement said.

“We believe a new visa subclass is needed to cater for minority applicants, as the current humanitarian visas fail to do this.”

The requirement for refugees to be registered with UNHCR is causing concern. There is a strong view within church groups that the government should use the Special Humanitarian Program, which has previously been used to relocate Copts from Egypt, more widely.

Scott Morrison, who was immigration minister before being appointed Treasurer, said this week Christians would make up a “very large component” of the 12,000 refugee intake in response to reports of 25 US states moving to stop all Syrian refugees being accepted.

“We are focusing on those persecuted minorities and that obviously includes a very large Christian component — in fact the majority, I would expect,” Mr Morrison said.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who has visited Jordan and Lebanon in recent weeks and this week welcomed the first Sunni Muslim family to Australia from the Syrian intake, said the government would not discriminate and was concentrating on taking women, children, persecuted groups and families.

A spokesman for Mr Dutton said the Immigration Minister had made it clear Australia would take refugees not only from the UNHCR program but also under the Special Humanitarian Program. He has previously said the Australian government will not be told by the UNHCR who to take, and Australia will make the decision on who is accepted.

FRONT PAGE MAG: D.C. Refuses to Arm Persecuted Christians Fighting [Islamic Terrorists] ISIS

To still not know which “side” U.S. leadership is on is to be beyond naïve.
 
By Raymond Ibrahim [Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.]
Source: FrontPageMag

In recent months, Mideast Christians have been forming militias to fight the Islamic State (IS) and other jihadi groups in both Iraq and Syria—even as the Obama administration, which arms the “opposition,” refuses to arm them.

In Iraq, some of the few remaining Assyrian Christians have formed militias under the name Dwekh Nawsha (literally meaning “self-sacrifice” in Christ’s native tongue of Aramaic). Most of these fighters are from among those Christians displaced from the Ninevah Plain due to the atrocities committed by IS and are on the frontlines fighting the jihadis.

They were formed soon after the U.S.-supported Kurdish Peshmerga, who are leading the fight against IS in the region, retreated from many Christian villages without a fight last summer, declining to protect them from the IS advance which led to the usual atrocities.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Christians have taken up arms because they want to protect their own land, and many no longer trust the Kurds to do it for them.” Indeed, the Kurds, including the Peshmerga, have been known to abuse and even persecute Christians. Like IS, Kurds are Sunni Muslims too.

“We will stay here, and Christians will protect Christians. Not Arabs or Kurds protecting us, but Christians,” said local commander Fouad Masaoud Gorgees.

In neighboring Syria, approximately 500 Syriac Christian fighters recently assembled and managed to prevent the Islamic State from entering the ancient Christian settlement of Sadad. But on October 30, IS captured a town less than five miles away, leaving Sadad vulnerable to continued assaults.

Even the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, Ignatius Aphrem II, traveled to Sadad to boost the morale of Christian defenders. Said Aphrem:

It was emotional but it was also very encouraging to see our young people determined to defend their land and stay in their homeland. To see them ready to fight and to sacrifice for their land, I think that’s what’s very meaningful, that made me very proud of them.

There’s a reason why Christians are frantically trying to save Sadad from the clutches of IS. As one Syriac Christian fighter put it, Sadad “is a symbolic place for us and we will not allow it to fall again.”

He is referring to the events of October 2013, when the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army—widely touted as moderate but in fact working with al-Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front—captured the town. They made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they killed, the “dogs of Assad”—“dog” being an ancient Islamic epithet for Christians—while shouting Islam’s victory-cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying “thank God”) and praise for the Free Syrian Army.

During their one week occupation of Sadad, the moderate/radical coalition tortured, raped, and murdered 45 Christians; the bodies of six people from one family alone, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for “subhuman” Christians).

At the time, Syriac Archbishop Selwanos Boutros called it Syria’s “largest massacre of Christians.” Even so, this massacre was wholly ignored by the Obama administration and so-called mainstream media in an effort to maintain the narrative that the Free Syrian Army was “moderate.”

Concerning the Sadad massacres, the archbishop had asked in 2013:

We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers?

As persecuted Mideast Christians have well learned since, most Western governments—the Obama administration at their head—could care less about their fate. They care only about one thing: overthrowing Assad—at any cost, including by directly or indirectly arming the Islamic terrorists that persecute Christians in horrific ways, including slaughtering those who refuse to renounce Christ for Muhammad.

Yet truly “moderate” Christian militias fighting the Islamic State are denied arms from Washington: “Lobbyists in D.C. are blocking weapons and equipment from reaching Dwekh Nawsha, the Christian militia force that has been fighting ISIS in Iraq’s Assyrian Nineveh plains.”

Retired Lt. Col. Sargis Sangari, an Iraq war veteran who served 20 years in the army, says: “As much as you’re giving money to all these individuals who are killing each other [the “moderate” terrorists, Kurds, etc.], why don’t you try to give it to the Assyrians?”…. Currently, their [Christians’] lack of resources prevents them from launching an offensive.” U.S. funding, training, and equipment would allow these Christian militias to take the fight to IS, added Sangari.

Of course, all of this assumes that U.S. leadership actually wants the Islamic State and other “moderate” jihadis to be defeated in an offensive by anyone—a dubious assumption.

Still, persecuted Christian pleas have not totally fallen on deaf ears. A few Western Christians, mostly Americans, have traveled to the Middle East to help the indigenous Christians fight the jihadis.

Seeing their governments, which possess the military capability to annihilate the Islamic State, do next to nothing—not even help arm Christians—against IS, these Western Christians have decided to take it on themselves to fight the good fight on behalf of the weak and oppressed.

Brett Felton, a former American soldier who once served in Iraq, now sees himself as a “soldier of Christ” and has returned to help train Dwekh Nawsha against IS.

According to the 28-year-old, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But here we’re actually fighting for the freedom of the people … to be able to live without persecution, to keep the church bells ringing.”

U.S. vet Jordan Matson, who has the words “Christ is Lord” inscribed in his vest, said: “I decided that if our government wasn’t going to do anything about it, I would… We’re getting shot at [by IS/jihadis] on pretty much a daily basis…. We don’t have the technology that the United States military has to push our enemies away.”

First the Christians of Iraq and then Syria implored the West for help against the Islamic persecutors that the United States unleashed by overthrowing secular strongman Saddam Hussein and now against Bashar Assad.

Brutally persecuted Christians were totally ignored by both government and media.

Then they implored the Obama administration to simply stop arming their persecutors. When that too fell on deaf ears, vastly outnumbered and underequipped Christians gathered to fight the Islamic State head on, hoping the U.S., which showers the “opposition” with weapons, would help equip them against IS.

No such luck. As a result, a few Western Christians who believe in religious freedom are risking their personal lives to help their Mideast brothers against the scourge of “ISIS.”

In light of all this, to still fail to understand which “side” U.S. leadership is on—they currently claim to be on the side of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”—is to be beyond naïve.