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By
PAT McCARTHY, March 20, 2017
Hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi Christians, who once made up one of the largest Christian
communities in the Middle East, are facing double discrimination as displaced
persons in their own country or as refugees abroad, according to agencies
working in the field.
Agency
sources say Christian refugees who have fled their homes in Iraq have been
ill-treated in refugee camps and frequently ignored in the selection process
for resettlement in other countries or in reconstruction plans within Iraq.
Christians
in Iraq — mostly Catholics of the Chaldean rite — numbered over 1.4 million, or
6 percent of the population, in 1987. After the Iraq War, around 400,000
remained by 2013.
At
the end of 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
reported that more than 4.4 million Iraqis were internally displaced, and an
additional 264,100 were refugees abroad.
In
January this year an alliance of 16 UK-based agencies working with refugees
issued a major report declaring that Christians are not being supported by the
international donor institutions and the UNHCR, and are having to rely on
churches that are trying to run their own aid programmes with limited funds.
“All
the NGOs involved in this report state that the vast majority of Christians and
other [non-Muslim] ‘minorities’ avoid UNHCR camps and facilities because of
continuing discrimination and persecution,” the report said, adding: “It is
utterly unacceptable that a place of sanctuary should be a place of fear that
repels those it is designed to save and protect.”
However,
the report said those who remain outside UNHCR camps “have fared . . .
unequally in the allocation of international aid, funding, political support,
media attention, and asylum placements”.
The
88-page report, published by World Watch Monitor (an agency which “reports the
story of Christians around the world under pressure for their faith”) said all
the NGOs involved in the report stated that the vast majority of Christians and
other “minorities” avoid UNHCR camps and facilities because of continuing
discrimination and persecution, so they do not qualify to receive aid.
Creed
Noting
that it is UNHCR policy not to record refugees’ religious affiliation, the
agencies urged the UNHCR to scrap its “need not creed” approach and acknowledge
the particular experiences of minorities such as Christians or Yazidis.
They
also urged the UNHCR to employ more nonMuslim registration and security staff,
and translators, to reduce discrimination against non-Muslims.
The
report contained accounts of Christian refugees approaching UNHCR and being
referred to local churches rather than being processed in the same way as other
applicants.
In
addition, it said some NGOs which are assisting Christians to leave the region
have encountered opposition from the UNHCR either through unnecessary delays or
blocked applications.
The
report also warned that Christians are being excluded from the National
Settlement plan being put together by Iraq and other regional powers and
presented to the United Nations, further eroding the likelihood of their return
once Islamic State has been militarily defeated there.
What
the UK agencies reported about UNHCR camps was reiterated in an article by
Samuel Tadros on the ABC [Australia] Religion and Ethics website on January 31,
2017.
“The
prioritisation of religious minority application is not only justified, but
would also correct a current wrong,” he wrote. “Out of 14,460 Syrian refugees
admitted into the United States since 2011, only 182 have belonged to religious
minorities — namely, 124 Christians, 25 Yazidis, 6 Zoroastrians, 3 atheists, 2
Baha’is, 14 ‘other’ and 8 with no religion. The reason for such a negligible
number of religious minorities is that the United States government depends on
the United Nations for choosing applicants from the refugee camps, and
religious minorities fear living in those camps as they are subjected to
persecution, preferring instead to go to church-run camps.”
An
earlier article by Tadros, a senior fellow at the [US] Hudson Institute’s
Center for Religious Freedom, appeared on the same website on December 12,
2016. Referring to Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria, he wrote:
“Unfortunately there is no longer any Christian presence in a specific
geographic location that would allow the creation of a safe haven or a country
of their own. There is simply no place for them, no mountain for them, that
would protect them.”
Shelter
The
director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, Nina Shea,
reported on December 8, 2016, that persecuted Iraqi Christians had been unable
to find shelter in UNHCR refugee camps anywhere in the region.
She
wrote: “Monsignor John Kozar of the pontifical Catholic Near East Welfare
Association, run by the NY Archdiocese, told a New York conference on Dec. 5
that Christians don’t dare enter UNHCR camps for they would be targeted by
Islamic gangs within them. John Pontifex, a director of the papal agency Aid to
the Church in Need, emailed me that he visited a UNHCR registered camp in
Lebanon, from where, he discovered, all the Christian refugees had fled in
fear, opting instead for the cramped but safer quarters of a nearby Christian
home.”
In a
Wall Street Journal article on October 7, 2016, Shea wrote that the UNHCR had
marginalised Christians and others targeted by ISIS for eradication in two
critical programmes: refugee housing in the region and refugee resettlement
abroad.
Shea
added: “Citing reports from many displaced Christians, a January report on
Christian refugees in Lebanon by the Catholic News Service stated: ‘Exit
options seem hopeless as refugees complain that the staff members of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are not following up on their cases
after an initial interview.’ This failure could be another example of why the
U.N. Internal Audit Division’s April 2016/034 report reprimanded the UNHCR for
‘unsatisfactory’ management . . . .
“As
for why so few Christians and Yazidis are finding shelter in the UNHCR’s
regional refugee camps, members of these groups typically say they aren’t safe.
Stephen Rasche, the resettlement official for the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese
in Erbil, Iraq, told Congress last month that in Erbil ‘there are no Christians
who will enter the UN camps for fear of violence against them’ . . .
“Persecuted
groups also found no help from the UN-established Independent Commission of
Inquiry on Syria in its only report on ISIS genocide. Issued in June, the
report focused solely on persecuted members of the Yazidi faith. The commission
— an influential adviser to the UNHCR — dismissed in a short paragraph the
notion that Christians also have been targeted for genocide.”
In
an earlier article (July 21, 2016) Shea had written: “Today there is a complete
absence anywhere in ISIS-controlled territory of functioning churches, active
clergy, and intact Christian communities.
“[I]n
the three major areas — Nineveh, Raqqa and Qaryatayn — where ISIS claims to
have ‘offered a jizya [per capita tax] option’, the offer has always, within a
short time, been followed by the rape, murder, kidnapping, enslavement, and
dispossession of Christians — all acts evidencing the crime of genocide.”
Jewish
A
Jewish voice in support of Christians facing extinction in the Middle East was
heard at an interfaith panel in New York on December 5, 2016.
“Today
we are witnessing the world’s indifference to the slaughter of Christians in
the Middle East and Africa,” said Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World
Jewish Congress and former US ambassador to Austria. Referencing the Holocaust,
he said, “Since 1945, genocide has occurred again and again. ‘Never Again!’ has
become hollow. You can’t just declare genocide and say the job is done. You
have to back it up with action.
“Jews
know what happens when the world is silent to mass slaughter. We learned it the
hard way,” Lauder added.
The
UK-based Barnabas Fund, an international, interdenominational agency supporting
persecuted Christians, has frequently raised concerns about discrimination
against Christian refugees fleeing genocide.
In a
January 12, 2017, statement, it said: “Christians who have fled Iraq and Syria
to nearby countries are largely ignored by the UN, with 97–99 per cent of those
refugees selected for resettlement in the UK and USA being Muslims. Meanwhile
those Christians who make it on their own to European countries such as Greece,
Germany and Sweden are placed in refugee shelters where many are targeted by
Islamists and are subjected to death threats and physical violence. At the
moment there is little sign that Western countries will significantly alter their
policies in either respect.”
In
an earlier statement (December 22, 2016), the Barnabas Fund accused the UNHCR
of “institutional discrimination” in how it operates on the ground.
It
said this was shown by the fact that the proportion of Christians among Syrian
refugees being resettled had fallen to less than 1 per cent in both the UK and
the US, despite that fact that prior to the civil war Christians made up around
10 per cent of Syria’s population.
“The
fact that they are so grossly underrepresented when they have been specifically
targeted for at least the last four and a half years implies that both the US
and UK governments would rather outsource their refugee programmes to an
international body that blatantly discriminates against those facing genocide,
than go to the trouble of selecting refugees themselves in a fairer and less
discriminatory way. By doing so, they risk seriously tarnishing the previously
high reputations of both counties for compassion, fairness and justice.”
On
September 7, 2015, the New Zealand Government announced it would accept 750
extra refugees from Syria, over a three-year period. Media reports suggest that
few in this group are Christian, although Christians account for 10 per cent of
the population in Syria.
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