Tag Archives: Syria

The Church of Antioch Speaks

Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America speaks

Antiochian.org

http://www.antiochian.org/his-eminence-metropolitan-philip-speaks-syria

We gather this evening to pray for the repose of the souls of the Arab martyrs who died in a vain war which history never experienced. When a revolution in Tunisia overthrew President Zin al-Abidin bin Ali, and when another revolution in Libya overthrew Colonel Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, the USA said, “This is the Arab Spring“. In the June issue of Word Magazine, which expresses the opinion of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, I wrote an editorial titled: Is this an Arab Spring or a tornado? This tornado extended to wounded Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, beloved Syria, and beautiful Lebanon, whilst Jordan stands these days on the edge of the abyss. After the Zionists’ gangs defeated all Arab armies during the first war between the Arabs and Israel, the great Syrian poet Omar Abu Risha, with much indignation, delivered a poem in Aleppo that said:

My nation, do you have among other nations a pulpit for the sword or pen?
I look at you with much sadness ashamed from your past which has vanished.
My nation, how many idols you glorified which did not have the purity of an idol?

This past which has vanished, and over which Omar Abu Risha shed tears, is the dawn of Islam when the Prophet Muhammad destroyed the idols of al-Kaʿbah. As our Lord Jesus Christ drove out the traders from the Temple saying to them, “My House is a house of prayer, but you have made out of it a den for thieves”. Are the Salafists and fundamentalists who slay children as if they are sheep and who stab men in the chest to take out the hearts of their enemies and eat them are Muslims? Oh my God, NO! They’re blasphemers, and if you don’t believe me, go to the Holy Quran and learn forgiveness and love. The Quran states, “Man is the brother of man whether he likes it or not”.

Advise them to read Sura al Imran, Sura al-Ma’ida, and Sura Maryam; then, maybe, they’d understand. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you and if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also”. He also said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. When we see rivers of blood streaming in the Arab streets, we can’t help but ask, “Are they really Muslims?” Moreover, when we see the Christian West supply Arab countries and Arab people with lethal weapons to kill each other we can’t help but ask, “Where are the Christians?”

Four months ago, gunmen abducted two Orthodox Archbishops from Aleppo, namely Archbishop Youhanna Ibrahim and Archbishop Boulos al-Yazigi. Rumour has it that they’re imprisoned between the Syrian and Turkish borders and other rumours say that they’ve been killed and departed to the Heavenly Kingdom. What did these two God-loving Archbishops, who dedicated their lives to prayer, good deeds, and preaching love do to deserve such treatment? Why haven’t we heard anything from them or their captors after all these days? Real revolutions are made for creating a new world, not for kidnapping, murder, stealing, burning churches and mosques, kidnapping bishops, and shedding the blood of priests.

I don’t want to talk too long, however, allow me to conclude this message with some verses of poetry which were written by the famous and great Damascene poet, Nizar Kabbani, may his soul rest in peace, during the commemoration of the establishment of the Arab League in Egypt, which moved to Tunisia after President Anwar al-Sadat signed that shameful peace with Israel. I remember from this famous poem the following immortal verses:

O green Tunisia I have come to you as a lover,
And on my forehead there is a book and a rose.
I am the Damascene whose profession is love.
He sang and the earth and the forest became green.
I am tired my friend with my Arabism.
Is Arabism a curse and torture?
The Arab world is either a slain
Lamb or a butcher ruler.

This is our tragic condition today. May the peace and the mercy of God and His blessings be upon you.

28 August 2013

Syria: A Watershed

It is now clear that the brutal war in Syria has become a watershed in twenty-first century history. 2013 is becoming an acid test, just like the events of 1913 in twentieth-century history. Thus, the elites of some countries have adopted a most hostile view towards the Syrian government and supported the terrorists; others, however, have supported the government and denied the terrorists. The same is true of all countries and institutions, from South Africa to the Vatican, from China to NATO, from Sweden to the Establishment BBC. More relevantly to us, the leaderships of various Local Orthodox Churches have also had to define their attitudes towards Syria and the merciless war there.

For example, the Arab-speaking Antiochian Orthodox Church is now drawing ever closer to the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of the Syrian crisis. On the other hand, there is the deafening silence of the US-backed Patriarchate of Constantinople – like the city of Antioch, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is in Turkey, the last remnant of the Ottoman Empire, and so is not free. Even more shocking are the anti-Christian and Russophobic criticisms of Russia by members of the immature OCA group is North America. However, unlike these, most Local Orthodox Churches are now realising that they have only one true friend – the Russian Church. They are leaning towards us and away from their pro-Western regimes.

As for the two parts of the Russian Church, the small Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the enormous Church Inside Russia (which we may here call ROCIR) are also drawing together. We have come a long way from our reconciliation of 2007. Since 2007 ROCOR has drawn closer to the Church Inside Russia, losing its politicised, Russophobic elements, whereas ROCIR in turn has been losing its old Soviet tinges. The two parts have been coming together, recognising how much we have in common. The same is true of individuals. Thus, one notable personality inside Russia, previously a pro-Western critic of the Tradition of his Church, has intelligently made a 180 degree turn and now fully supports his own Church.

It is indeed time to come together. A great question is now facing all the Local Orthodox Churches and, for that matter, all conscious Orthodox: whose side are we on? Previously, it was possible to dither and hesitate, to put off. Previously, it was possible to ‘be open’ and not take sides. But the opportunity for indecision is now rapidly coming to an end. The fact is that all who have not yet decided will have to make a decision – and soon. The Western elites have opted for the suicidal devaluation of marriage and at the same time support for Islamic terrorism. What do we do? Are we on the side of the Russian Church and Jerusalem – or are we on the side of the Western elites and Sodom?

Syria: Another Western War Crime In The Making

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2013/august/27/syria-another-western-war-crime-in-the-making.aspx

Syria: Another Western War Crime In The Making
Tuesday August 27, 2013
Refuse To Fight

The war criminals in Washington and other Western capitals are determined to maintain their lie that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Having failed in efforts to intimidate the UN chemical inspectors in Syria, Washington has demanded that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon withdraw the chemical weapons inspectors before they can assess the evidence and make their report. The UN Secretary General stood up to the Washington war criminals and rejected their demand. However, as with Iraq, Washington’s decision to commit aggression against Syria is not based on any facts.

The US and UK governments have revealed none of the “conclusive evidence” they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.

The face that the West presents to the world is the brazen face of a liar.

Washington and its British and French puppet governments are poised to yet again reveal their criminality. The image of the West as War Criminal is not a propaganda image created by the West’s enemies, but the portrait that the West has painted of itself.

The UK Independent reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed “rebels”, largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the “rebels,” who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.

Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama’s war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded. What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.

The Syrian government, knowing that it is not responsible for the chemical weapons incident, has agreed for the UN to send in chemical inspectors to determine the substance used and the method of delivery. However, Washington has declared that it is “too late” for UN inspectors and that Washington accepts the self-serving claim of the al Qaeda affiliated “rebels” that the Syrian government attacked civilians with chemical weapons.

In an attempt to prevent the UN chemical inspectors who arrived on the scene from doing their work, the inspectors were fired upon by snipers in “rebel” held territory and forced off site, although a later report from RT says the inspectors have returned to the site to conduct their inspection.

The corrupt British government has declared that Syria can be attacked without UN authorization, just as Serbia and Libya were militarily attacked without UN authorization. In other words, the Western democracies have already established precedents for violating international law. “International law? We don’t need no stinking international law!” The West knows only one rule: Might is Right. As long as the West has the Might, the West has the Right.

In a response to the news report that the US, UK, and France are preparing to attack Syria, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, said that such unilateral action is a “severe violation of international law,” and that the violation was not only a legal one but also an ethical and moral violation. Lavrov referred to the lies and deception used by the West to justify its grave violations of international law in military attacks on Serbia, Iraq, and Libya and how the US government used preemptive moves to undermine every hope for peaceful settlements in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Once again Washington has preempted any hope of peaceful settlement. By announcing the forthcoming attack, the US destroyed any incentive for the “rebels” to participate in the peace talks with the Syrian government. On the verge of these talks taking place, the “rebels” now have no incentive to participate as the West’s military is coming to their aid.

In his press conference Lavrov spoke of how the ruling parties in the US, UK, and France stir up emotions among poorly informed people that, once aroused, have to be satisfied by war. This, of course, is the way the US manipulated the public in order to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. But the American public is tired of the wars, the goal of which is never made clear, and has grown suspicious of the government’s justifications for more wars.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that “Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed.” However, Obama could not care less that only 9 percent of the public supports his warmongering. As former president Jimmy Carter recently stated, “America has no functioning democracy.” It has a police state in which the executive branch has placed itself above all law and the Constitution.

This police state is now going to commit yet another Nazi-style war crime of unprovoked aggression. At Nuremberg the Nazis were sentenced to death for precisely the identical actions being committed by Obama, Cameron, and Hollande. The West is banking on might, not right, to keep it out of the criminal dock.

The US, UK, and French governments have not explained why it matters whether people in the wars initiated by the West are killed by explosives made of depleted uranium or with chemical agents or any other weapon. It was obvious from the beginning that Obama was setting up the Syrian government for attack. Obama demonized chemical weapons–but not nuclear “bunker busters” that the US might use on Iran. Then Obama drew a red line, saying that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrians was such a great crime that the West would be obliged to attack Syria. Washington’s UK puppets, William Hague and Cameron, have just repeated this nonsensical claim. The final step in the frame-up was to orchestrate a chemical incident and blame the Syrian government.

What is the West’s real agenda? This is the unasked and unanswered question. Clearly, the US, UK, and French governments, which have displayed continuously their support for dictatorial regimes that serve their purposes, are not the least disturbed by dictatorships. They brand Assad a dictator as a means of demonizing him for the ill-informed Western masses. But Washington, UK, and France support any number of dictatorial regimes, such as the ones in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now the military dictatorship in Egypt that is ruthlessly killing Egyptians without any Western government speaking of invading Egypt for “killing its own people.”

Clearly also, the forthcoming Western attack on Syria has nothing whatsoever to do with bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria any more than freedom and democracy were reasons for the attacks on Iraq and Libya, neither of which gained any “freedom and democracy.”

The Western attack on Syria is unrelated to human rights, justice or any of the high sounding causes with which the West cloaks its criminality.

The Western media, and least of all the American presstitutes, never ask Obama, Cameron, or Hollande what the real agenda is. It is difficult to believe than any reporter is sufficiently stupid or gullible to believe that the agenda is bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria or punishing Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against murderous thugs trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

Of course, the question wouldn’t be answered if asked. But the act of asking it would help make the public aware that more is afoot than meets the eye. Originally, the excuse for Washington’s wars was to keep Americans safe from terrorists. Now Washington is endeavoring to turn Syria over to jihad terrorists by helping them to overthrow the secular, non-terrorist Assad government. What is the agenda behind Washington’s support of terrorism?

Perhaps the purpose of the wars is to radicalize Muslims and, thereby, destabilize Russia and even China. Russia has large populations of Muslims and is bordered by Muslim countries. Even China has some Muslim population. As radicalization spreads strife into the only two countries capable of being an obstacle to Washington’s world hegemony, Western media propaganda and the large number of US financed NGOs, posing as “human rights” organizations, can be counted on by Washington to demonize the Russian and Chinese governments for harsh measures against “rebels.”

Another advantage of the radicalization of Muslims is that it leaves former Muslim countries in long-term turmoil or civil wars, as is currently the case in Iraq and Libya, thus removing any organized state power from obstructing Israeli purposes.

Secretary of State John Kerry is working the phones using bribes and threats to build acceptance, if not support, for Washington’s war crime-in-the-making against Syria.

Washington is driving the world closer to nuclear war than it ever was even in the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. When Washington finishes with Syria, the next target is Iran. Russia and China will no longer be able to fool themselves that there is any system of international law or restraint on Western criminality. Western aggression is already forcing both countries to develop their strategic nuclear forces and to curtail the Western-financed NGOs that pose as “human rights organizations,” but in reality comprise a fifth column that Washington can use to destroy the legitimacy of the Russian and Chinese governments.

Russia and China have been extremely careless in their dealings with the United States. Essentially, the Russian political opposition is financed by Washington. Even the Chinese government is being undermined. When a US corporation opens a company in China, it creates a Chinese board on which are put relatives of the local political authorities. These boards create a conduit for payments that influence the decisions and loyalties of local and regional party members. The US has penetrated Chinese universities and intellectual attitudes. The Rockefeller University is active in China as is Rockefeller philanthropy. Dissenting voices are being created that are arrayed against the Chinese government. Demands for “liberalization” can resurrect regional and ethnic differences and undermine the cohesiveness of the national government.

Once Russia and China realize that they are riven with American fifth columns, isolated diplomatically, and outgunned militarily, nuclear weapons become the only guarantor of their sovereignty. This suggests that nuclear war is likely to terminate humanity well before humanity succumbs to global warming or rising national debts.

Flickr/Alan Denney
Tags – Syria
Written by Paul Craig Roberts

An Official Russian Orthodox View on Syria

Speaking to AsiaNews, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, head of the Russian Orthodox Foreign Affairs Department, condemned threats of NATO intervention without a UN mandate. As a Western military intervention against the Syrian government appears increasingly likely, He expressed “strong concern” about possible developments of the crisis, following unproven American charges that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians. (Other sources suggest that the sarin gas employed was provided to the terrorists by a nearby foreign power). Metropolitan Hilarion said, “Once again, as was the case in Iraq, the USA is acting as an international executioner”. Speaking to AsiaNews, he strongly criticised the American position, calling it “completely one-sided”. He went on to say, “Without the endorsement of the UN, they want to decide the fate of a whole country of millions of inhabitants. Once again, they’ll sacrifice thousands of lives on the altar of an imaginary democracy; first of all, Christians, about whose fate no one cares. They’re at risk of becoming hostages to the situation and the main victims of radical extremist forces, who, with the help of the USA, will come to power. The international community must do everything to avoid events developing in this direction”.

27 August 2013

AsiaNews

One Step Closer to Armageddon

With two wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western governments are apparently intending to continue their folly by meddling in Syria. Eighty people die there every day, as thousands of foreign Sunni mercenaries massacre the Christian, Alawite and Shia population. The terrorists are financed by Sunni Saudi Arabia and Qatar and trained by the USA, Britain and France. Now the West has fabricated ‘evidence’ of the use of chemical weapons – just as it fabricated ‘evidence’ of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq.

Iraq itself is now divided into three and racked by terrorist bombs; full-scale civil war draws ever closer. Iraqi deputies have asked for the heads of state of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to be tried at the international court in the Hague for supporting extremist terrorists and their unspeakable atrocities, notably in Iraq, Syria and the Yemen. As for Turkey, along whose borders there are training camps for the terrorists in Syria, trained by US, UK and French ‘Special Forces’, it has now too been racked by civil revolt.

The Jordan, once virtually a British colony and now a US protectorate ruled by King Abdallah II, nicknamed ‘Play Station’, has allowed hundreds of tons of arms and munitions to be transferred to its territory at the behest of the dictatorships of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. Arms shipments have been organised by the CIA, notably from Croatia. As a result, Jordan is now facing the same unrest as has broken out under the dictatorial regime in Turkey and may yet face territorial division.

Meanwhile, Egypt faces economic and constitutional chaos with daily demonstrations. The persecuted Copts are leaving in their tens of thousands, just as 80% of the Christians had to leave Iraq. In Libya, tribes and militias have divided the country into three and massacre one another daily, not least in Tripoli. Towns and cities of Tunisia are under curfew every evening and Tunisian soldiers are fighting Islamist terrorists near the Algerian border. As for Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Yemen and Bahrein, they are all in a state of unrest.

Two lost, bankrupting and disastrously disturbing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left NATO forces fleeing for their lives (with ‘exit strategies’) from the hornets’ nests which they have stirred up through their meddling. However, the whole Middle East is now in a state of chaos after the Islamist winter, so absurdly called an ‘Arab spring’ and so encouraged by the mixture of purposeful cynicism, self-righteous naivety and stupid greed of Western governments. The Middle East is moving one step closer to Armageddon.

Today China, Tomorrow…

The visit of His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill to China is over. He has travelled widely, celebrating notably in Beijing and in the Cathedrals in Harbin and Shanghai, remembering the work of the Russian and Chinese clergy and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia there, notably of St John of Shanghai. Thus, the groundwork is being laid for the restoration of the national Chinese Church, dependent neither on the Catholic Vatican nor on Protestant America.

Professor Yury Kosov, Dean of the Faculty of International Relations of the North-Western Academy in Russia, commented today: ‘Not so long ago I was attending the defence of a doctoral thesis at the Faculty of International Relations in St Petersburg, entitled ‘Orthodox spiritual mission in the context of global processes of modernisation’. ‘Today we see that the Orthodox mission of the Russian Church is spreading the faith not only among Russian citizens, but worldwide. The Russian Church is active in furthering the spread of Orthodox values wherever it is possible…We must understand that in our world politics and spirituality are interconnected. If we do not defend national sovereignty…it is hard to keep spirituality in a country’.

The Russian Church also has a role to play in freeing bankrupt Cyprus and Greece and NATO-occupied Serbia. It is also active in Syria. Here it seems that the attempt to seize power by mainly foreign Islamist terrorists, financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and backed by Western Special Services in the Jordan and Turkey, and armed even with chemical weapons to commit their atrocities, is failing. What they achieved with Western backing and arms in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt is perhaps not going to succeed in Syria. What the Islamists achieved in Iraq, with 80% of the Christians now expelled, and what they are trying to achieve in Egypt with the expulsion and massacre of the Copts, may not work here. The Patriarchate of Antioch, its flock often in exile in the Lebanon and Europe, may be reformed under the Russian Church.

Whatever criticisms may be levelled at the Russian Church inside Russia and its unworthy representatives outside Russia for their compromises in the past, it has to be recognised that with its canonical territory of 26.2 million square kilometres, between one fifth and one sixth of the world’s land area, and with that population, 1.755 billion, exactly one quarter of the world’s population, the Russian Church as a global power must now be recognised. In the last forty years we in the Russian Orthodox Church have come a long way, even from only a few years ago, when we were still a persecuted minority, mocked, buffeted and spat upon by all and sundry, both locally and globally.

The Crusades Rebound

Introduction

Yesterday’s warning from President Assad of Syria that the West will pay a heavy price for supporting al-Qaida militants in Syria’s civil war and that those militants will turn against their backers and strike ‘in the heart of Europe and the United States’, should be heeded. After two years of bloody war, he should know about terrorism. President Assad has given a warning to the West. It is the same warning as that which is given in the old proverb: ‘Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’. Will the West take heed?

Bolshevism

In Syria the West is repeating the very same mistake that it made in Russia in 1917. Then, having decided that the Tsarist system was not in its interests, it chose to back a group of aristocratic Russophobic revolutionaries who dreamed of setting up a Western-style Constitutional or Republican ‘democratic’ system in Russia. These feeble, uprooted and deluded dreamers were soon replaced by ruthless pragmatists who had no qualms of conscience about massacring all their enemies. The result was anti-Russian Marxist Bolshevism, the second most murderous Western ideology, after Naziism, known to human history. Not only did this ideology kill tens of millions over three generations inside the new Soviet Union, it also gave the West a new enemy and Cold War.

In its habitual mixture of naivety born of ignorance and arrogance born of self-absorption, the West created its own enemy. Thus, its ideology of ‘one size fits all’, that the whole world must be Westernised despite the flagrant failures of the West, its literal and spiritual bankruptcy, brought the West a new enemy. If it had not meddled in Russia, it would never have had to face German Naziism or Soviet Communism. Thus, the anti-Russian Crusades of the 13th century Teutonic Knights rebounded, as East Prussia and the Reichstag fell to the Red Army in 1945. However, Soviet Communism could not survive three generations. The Soviet gerontocats who so foolishly invaded Afghanistan were confronted by a West that so foolishly trained and financed Islamist al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Islamism

Just as the West undermined ‘nasty’ Tsarism in 1917 using ‘nice’ secularist Russian dupes, today it is undermining ‘nasty’ President Assad. It fails to see that President Assad is the lesser evil and that the ‘nice’ secularist Muslim dupes whom it backs have already been crushed by the new Bolsheviks, the fanatical Islamists, whom it has financed and armed. The Western Crusades in the Middle East are rebounding; the result is a Middle East which is being spiritually ‘cleansed’ of Christianity, in Iraq, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Moreover, further to the south of these countries along the African Christian/Muslim fault line, Christians in a whole series of countries, Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, are also being spiritually ‘cleansed’ by Islamism in bitter persecution.

More than this, Western ignorance and arrogance have brought Islamism to its heart. Large parts of Western Europe now have Muslim populations of between 5% and 95%. Naively thinking that Muslims were just as secular as themselves, since 1945 greedy Western elites allowed them to settle in their own countries (naturally without consulting their peoples). Today, Marseilles is the largest Algerian city apart from Algiers, most boys born in parts of several large cities in England are called Mohammed, parts of Germany are being conquered by Turkey, Belgium is alarmed by the numbers of Belgian Muslims fighting as Islamist mercenaries in Syria, and the list of Western countries whose skylines are going to be dominated by mosques goes from Sweden to Italy and from Spain to Norway.

Conclusion

The West has stopped believing in its millennial semi-Christianity, in ‘Western’ Christianity. But as a result of the globalisation spread by the West, everything is global, including global terror and global Islamism. And so if the spiritual vacuum of the West, and we know that nature abhors a vacuum, is not filled by the real and full Christianity of Western roots, by Orthodoxy, it will be filled by Islam. Unfortunately, self-destruction is now at the top of the Western agenda, as even President Assad has pointed out….

Christians Become Preferred Target in Syria’s Civil War

Posted GMT 4-2-2013 18:58:12

http://www.aina.org/news/20130402135812.htm

Christian Syrians have become a special target of violence and attacks in the ongoing war in Syria, according to Swedish freelance journalist and author Nuri Kino visited refugee’s in Lebanon late
December 2012. Kino filed a horrifying report of killings, kidnappings and rape of Christian Syrians, who are now forced to flee their country, even as the ongoing war in Syria affects every citizen, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

But the situation of the minorities is often neglected in media reports. Nuri Kino visited Lebanon together with Ninson Ibrahim, chair of the Swedish Syriac-Orthodox youth organization UI
(Ungdomsinitiativet). UI organized a charity concert before Christmas in Stockholm to support Christian Syrian war refugees. The purpose of the trip was to investigate the needs of the refugees
and to distribute help. Kino met with Christian refugees, priests, and smugglers.

Back in Stockholm, Kino said that Western media’s report on the war in Syria is too black and white. “Of course, there are exceptions. But one must always try to be aware of the context when there is a
news flash,” Kino said. Kino’s report tells the story of Christians being victims of attacks both from criminals and from terrorists. In some villages there are no Christians left as all have been forced to leave, like in the village of Rasel-Eyn. “I felt I had to contribute to make the voice of the Christians heard. My knowledge should be used,” Kino said, who is himself a Christian from Turkey. “I have an advantage in that I know the language and the culture. I also have a network in Syria.”

Churches and monasteries in Lebanon are trying to register the refugees as they arrive, but so far there are no reliable statistics on how many Christians have fled Syria. Hundreds of refugees seek asylum in Lebanon, some try to go to Germany or to Sweden. Many
Syrians/Assyrians live in Södertälje, a suburb south of Stockholm. Around 30 Christian refugees from Syria arrive every week in Södertälje, according to Kino. They are all Assyrians/Syriacs by ethnicity, as 20,000 inhabitants already living in Södertälje.

Nuri Kinos’ report “Between the Barbed Wire” tells about Christians being victims of harassment, theft, rape, murder and kidnappings. In the Syriac League Institute in Beirut, Nuri Kino met with a widow
who lost both her husband and her son in a murder. “They were brutally killed, both shot in the head by terrorists, Islamists”, she said. “Our only crime is our Christian faith.”

Approximately twelve per cent of the inhabitants in Syria are Christians. Many of them will try to leave the country, Kino said. The larger portion of Christian refugees go to Lebanon, but some seek asylum in Turkey. During the war in Syria, the rebels have become steadily more influenced by Islamists, says Kino, who
believes 70% of the attacks on Christians are carried out by rebel Islamists.

“The revolution started by youngsters writing graffiti. It was not an Islamist movement at all. The revolution has been kidnapped. Today, violent forces have taking over parts of the revolution and
publishes videos where people are being decapitated,” says Kino.
Kino points out that there were Christians among the rebels from the beginning: “Oh yes! And there were legitimate claims for the revolution. There was religious freedom in Syria before the war, but no political freedom. But the revolution was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists,” says Kino.

However, later development of the revolution has resulted in a situation where Christians are being targeted. And Kino is pessimistic about the future. “I don’t think there is still a possibility to change this revolution into something good,” he says.
In the report, many Christians voice disappointment with “the West” and the US, and with media’s reporting on the war. “You must understand that this is being done deliberately. They want to clear the country of every non-Muslim. And in the West, you are just watching it going on. It is as if the US and all other countries
have become blind or mad. Do you really want an Islamist state instead of the Assad regime? Is that better?” said a man in a café at the Assyrian/Syriac association in Beirut to Kino.

There are also claims that Saudi Arabia is involved in the conflict, sending weapons and money to the revolutionary forces. Christians inside Lebanon are trying their best to help Syrian refugees. In the
report Nuri Kino tells about a visit to a monastery. Here, there are more than hundred refugees seeking asylum, a place to live and a job. Every week new refugees arrive. One of the Church representatives in Lebanon, the Catholic Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Josef III, has earlier criticized the EU for being passive about the situation. “At the moment we have 300 families who have fled Syria. We are trying our best to help them. There are no refugee camps here. Two, three families live in a flat of two or three rooms. But there are few flats available, and we have turned a school into a refugee camp,” the Patriarch said to Kino.

Many refugees have paid substantial sums of money to smugglers to be able to leave Syria. Kino tells the story of Jacob, who ended up in a boat to Italy. He survived the trip, but many of other passengers
did not. Jacob’s story is a horrifying story about people being packed together like cattle in a small boat with no water or food supply for days. Jacob is now in Sweden, very traumatized. During the interview, Kino picks up the phone to call him to see if he has received asylum status in Sweden. “In Sweden, these refugees get a temporary asylum for three years. As Syria is in a war, there are no problems in getting asylum,” Kino said.

After the visit to Lebanon in December Kino went back to Turkey to interview other refugees about the situation for Christians in Syria. “The situation now is even worse than in December,” Kino said.
“This time I met with 21 young Syrian soldiers who fled the governmental armed forces of Syria. Their stories touched my heart. It demands a great courage to leave the army. They are just young boys, and they became tools in the war,” says Kino.

The report on the situation of the Christian minority has reached international attention. Kino hopes that it will change the view of the war and also make the world aware of the situation for non-Muslims in Syria. “Assyrians and other Christians in Syria have been part of the country for 2000 years. It would be devastating if the majority of them would be forced to leave the country such as in Iraq,” says Nuri Kino.

By Inger Alestig
http://themediaproject.org

The Patriarchate of Antioch is facing oblivion in its homeland

Most Orthodox Christians in Syria live in the westernmost parts of that country. It is from here that most of the Christians have been forced to flee for their lives, mainly to the Lebanon. Catholic sources now say that 65% of the natives of Aleppo, once the largest Christian city in Syria, have fled, that every single parish both in the city centre and in the suburbs of Homs, the third largest city in Syria, has been devastated, and that in Damascus itself most parishes have closed and the enthronement of Patriarch John took place in a half-empty Cathedral; it was necessary to hold another enthronement in Beirut. After the Golgotha of Iraq’s Christians, Syria has followed. The Patriarchate, forced out of Antioch (in Turkey), may now be forced out of Damascus in turn. Two news reports follow.

Syria: Muslim Militia Forces Christian Exodus

Posted GMT 3-2-2013 7:12:8
http://www.aina.org/news/20130302011208.htm

Syria’s 2,000-year-old Christian community is being devastated by the country’s civil war.
A Swedish journalist interviewed more than 100 Syrian Christian refugees in Turkey and
Lebanon. They say Muslim rebel militia are driving them out because of their faith.
One woman said her husband and son were shot in the head just because they were
Christians.

Syria’s population of 2 million Christians is the second largest in the Middle East after Egypt,
and now whole villages are disappearing when Islamist rebels arrive. Every week, hundreds of Syrian Christians arrive in Lebanon. A Lebanese Patriarch said it is a ‘great exodus taking place in silence.’

CBN Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell spoke with Lela Gilbert, co-author
of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, about the persecution of Christians
in Syria and the Middle East.
Watch more of Mitchell’s interview with Gilbert.

Number of Syrians in Lebanon Reaches 920,000

http://www.aina.org/news/20130302011551.htm
Posted GMT 3-2-2013 7:15:51

According to Lebanese government sources, more than 920,000 Syrians (both migrant
workers and persons displaced from the war) are now in Lebanon. The security problems are
getting worse in many areas in Lebanon because many of these Syrians are armed. Western
diplomats in Lebanon have praised the Lebanese government for its cooperation and for not
closing the Lebanese-Syrian border, just as they have praised the Lebanese people for
hosting displaced Syrian families.

But some Western ambassadors have begun to warn Lebanese officials that the displaced
Syrians now constitute a ‘powder keg’, especially since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s
opponents have started thinking of forming armed militias in Lebanon, risking a war between
them and the Lebanese. (There are precise figures about the armed Syrians, which show
they are all over Lebanon, including the capital.)

According to Western circles, the gravity of the issue is pressuring the Lebanese government
to keep a close eye on displaced Syrians in Lebanon. These Western circles told As-Safir
that the Syrian crisis could spread to Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati is consistent with the Western officials he meets (most
recently, British Foreign Secretary William Hague when he visited Lebanon, and UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in Davos). He has given Western countries three options: to
close the border with Syria, which is impossible for practical and geographic reasons,
especially since 80% of the Lebanese border is shared with Syria; to transfer some of those
displaced to other countries or for Lebanon to be quickly given material aid as its
humanitarian burden grows.

Of course, the third option is preferred by Western countries and the UN, even though they
are very slow in providing the funds promised at the conference for displaced Syrians in
Kuwait.

Circles close to Mikati told As-Safir that ‘the disbursement of funds is very slow. Lebanon is
in immediate need of $370 million but all we have received so far are promises’. The two
countries that generally keep their promises of money are ‘Kuwait and the UAE, which are
giving large amounts of money for the displaced’….

By Marlene Khalifeh
AL Monitor
Translated from As-Safir (Lebanon).

The Silent Exodus of Syria’s Christians

Posted GMT 2-9-2013 4:10:
http://www.aina.org/news/20130208221023.htm

In Syria’s rebellion, no religious or ethnic group has been spared horrific levels of loss and suffering, but its 2,000-year-old Christian minority is now facing a distinct persecution.

Under the cover of war and chaos, this group, which alone lacks militias of its own, is easy prey for Islamists and criminals, alike. These assaults are driving out the Christians en masse. This 2,000-year-old community, numbering around 2 million is the largest church in the Middle East after Egypt’s Copts, and it now faces extinction. Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the East, despite recent heart surgery, is now constantly on the road in Lebanon and Iraq trying to cope with the refugee crisis. He wrote to me today:

“We are witnessing another Arab country losing its Christian Assyrian minority. When it happened in Iraq nobody believed Syria’s turn would come. Christian Assyrians are fleeing massively from threats, kidnappings, rapes and murders. Behind the daily reporting about bombs there is an ethno-religious cleansing taking place, and soon Syria can be emptied of its Christians.”

Official information and media reports about the Christians’ fate has been sparse. A new report yesterday, by Nuri Kino, a Swedish journalist of Assyrian background, sheds valuable light on the atrocities visited upon the Christians inside Syria, and their ordeals in attempting to escape, relying as they must on exploitative human-trafficking networks that have sprung up. Entitled “Between the Barbed Wire,” the report resulted from a trip sponsored by a Swedish charity, the Syriac Orthodox Youth Organization, to assess the needs of refugees. It is based on over a hundred interviews this past Christmas with Christian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon. The refugees and the Lebanese bishops whom Kino and his team interview relate that Christians are leaving in a torrent. Once they cross into Lebanon, guided by Middle Eastern versions of “coyotes” through a harrowing series of checkpoints
guarded by various sides in the conflict, they mostly seek out the local Christian communities for help. A clearly overwhelmed Archbishop George Saliba, on Mount Lebanon, says about the refugees: “I want to help as many as I can, but it is not sustainable. We have hundreds of Syrian refugees who arrive every week. I don’t know what to do.”

Elsewhere in Lebanon, St. Gabriel’s monastery has opened its 75 unheated rooms to over a hundred refugees. In another Lebanese Christian town, the Syrian Catholic patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Josef III has converted a school building into a shelter for the hundreds of refugees there now and the others constantly arriving. The patriarch describes it as the “great exodus taking place in silence.” He also says he houses Christians who fled several years ago from Iraq. All of the Christian towns visited for the report are scrambling to keep up with the influx of Syrian Christians. Church
leaders were grateful for the beds, washing machines, heaters, and medicine brought by the Swedish visitors.

Some of the Syrians say they plan to stay in Lebanon until Syria “calms down” and they can return to their homes. Many others say going back is “unthinkable” and are making plans to try to get to Europe either on valid visas or by paying smugglers the going rate of $20,000. They are largely small-business owners and skilled
professionals — an engineer and his family, a jeweler and his, a hairdresser, a medical student, etc. Many hope to be smuggled to Sweden and Germany, where they can receive some state subsidies until they find work.

The town of Sodertalje seems to be a popular destination, with 35 new Christian families arriving from Syria each week. Kino, himself a citizen of Sodertalje, relates that there are already many Syrian Christians living there, and Arabic is more common than Swedish. The refugees were panic-stricken, pointing to some horrifying triggering event that forced them out — a kidnapping of a relative, a murder, or a robbery. They feel they are targeted for being Christian, which means that militants and criminals can assault them with impunity. Some point to a government that fails to protect them; others to Islamists rebels who want to drive them out. A refugee tells Kino: “Two men from a strong Arabic tribe decided one day to occupy our farmland, just like that. When I went to the police to report, I was told there was nothing they could do. The police chief was very clear that they would not act, as they didn’t want the tribe to turn against the regime.”

A woman from Hassake recounts how her husband and son were shot in the head by Islamists. “Our only crime is being Christians,” she answers when asked if there had been a dispute. A father says: “We’re not poor, we didn’t run from poverty. We ran from fear. I have to think about my twelve-year-old daughter. She’s easy prey for kidnappers. Three children of our friends were kidnapped. In two cases they paid enormous ransoms to get the children back, and in one case they paid but got the child back dead.”

Another man attests: “In Syria, you don’t know who is your friend and who is your enemy. The wealthy have it the worst. Criminals wait in line to kidnap them.” The refugees all fear the Islamists. When the jihadi rebel units show up and take over a town, like Rasel-Eyn, it loses its Christian population over night. One man from there tells Kino: “The so-called Free Syrian Army, or rebels, or whatever you choose to call them in the West, emptied the city of its Christians, and soon there won’t be a single Christian in the whole country.”

There is no complete data on the number of refugees. How many Christians have fled is not known and escapees continue to come across the border each day. We are only beginning to understand the peril they face. Archdeacon Youkhana pleads: “The world must open their eyes to the plight.”

By Nina Shea

National Review Online

Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers,
March 2013).