David Cameron is under pressure to officially recognise the mass slaughter of Christians in the Middle East as “genocide”. A letter written by Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Cox has called on the British Prime Minister to “urgently consider” the plight of Christian asylum seekers and give them priority before they are wiped out by Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists.
The letter says: “many Christian refugees, having been terrorised by IS in Syria and Iraq, have had to leave the refugee camps because of cruelties inflicted upon them inside the camps”.
It adds: “They will therefore not be included in the camp referrals and will thereby be excluded from the 20,000 the UK will take.”
The Sunday Express reports the plea comes as peers continue to plead with Mr Cameron to allow more migrants into Britain that are not already in UN camps. They fear no Christians would be included in the 20,000-strong intake which the PM has promised Britain will accept over the next five years. Instead those left behind will die in an Islamist-driven genocide.
AP Photo/Hussein Malla
Lord Alton said the prevalence of Islamic countries in the region that can offer safe haven to Muslims meant that Christians must be “prioritised” in Britain.
He said: “The Government must realise that what Christians in the Middle East are experiencing is genocide, and nothing less.
“In parts of Lebanon, there are whole valleys full of desperate Christian communities who are there because they were unable to stay in the camps.
“The Prime Minister is right to target those most at risk, but he won’t necessarily find them in the camps. If the only people we are helping are in the camps then, apart from unaccompanied children, we won’t be helping the most at risk.”
Last week, the House of Lords was told of the execution of a 12-year-old Christian child in a village outside Aleppo after his father refused to renounce his faith.
His story is just one example of mass murder of a people that is deliberate and brutal, rooted in religious hatred of the “infidel.” It is meted out in sudden violent executions, mass deportations and the gradual, methodical destruction of their civilizations.
Lord Alton said: “Isis tortured the child, with two other Christians, and crucified them to death. In an attempt to force his father to convert, the boy had his fingertips cut off.
“Their bodies were left hanging on crosses for two days under signs reading ‘infidels’. If that is not genocide, what is? I ask the Minister when our Government will join with Pope Francis and others and name it for what it is.”
The call came as Canon Andrew White, known as the Vicar of Baghdad, revealed he once invited Islamic State leaders to discuss the crisis. They responded by threatening to decapitate hime.
Canon White had been head of St George’s Church – the only Anglican church in Iraq – but was ordered to leave by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby last December as Christians came under increasing threat from IS terrorists.
Meanwhile a report from the United Kingdom-based Catholic charity group Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has confirmed that Middle East Christians, especially in Iraq and Syria, are “on course for extinction” within a generation or sooner.
The report—titled “Persecuted and Forgotten? A report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2013-2015”— finds that the time period from October 2013 to July 2015 has been “catastrophic for many Christians in the regions where persecution is worst,” such as in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
The report blames “religio-ethnic cleansing” that is being powered by the “well-publicized threat of genocide” as the main factor behind the Christian genocide.
“Be it in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria or parts of east Africa, the growing threat of militant Muslim groups—notably Daesh (Islamic State)—has prompted hundreds of thousands to flee” and that is “the primary cause of the contraction of Christians—changing from being a global faith to a regional one, with the faithful increasingly absent from ever-widening areas,” said the report.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.