Tag: Syria

For persecuted Christian women, violence is compounded by ‘shaming’

March 8, 2019 International Algeria, Colombia, Converts, Eritrea, Iraq, Islamic State, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Women, Yemen

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.

It would be hard to argue the world is unaware that Islamic State fighters used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war against Iraq’s Yazidi women: Nadia Murad shared the 2018 Nobel Prize after she told the world of her personal ordeal at their hands. However, testimonies from . . . Read More

IS ‘won’t escape justice’ after Trump signs genocide accountability act

December 13, 2018 International Donald Trump, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, UN, USA

US President Donald Trump signs the "Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018" in the presence of, among others, Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq (l). (Photo: Getty)

US President Donald Trump has signed into law a bill that will help to ensure aid is provided to Islamic State’s victims in Iraq and Syria and to hold the perpetrators accountable, reports Associated Press (AP). “In recent years, IS has committed horrifying atrocities against religious and ethnic minorities in Syria . . . Read More

UK parliamentary group calls out 27 countries for ‘significant’ religious freedom violations

December 10, 2018 International Afghanistan, Ahmed Shaheed, Bangladesh, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Egypt, Eritrea, Human rights, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Religious freedom, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tariq Ahmad, Turkey, Turkmenistan, UK, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen

A church in Bartella, a town near the Iraqi city of Mosul, after Islamic State militants left the area in October 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

A “Commentary on the Current State of Freedom of Religion or Belief” presented by a group of British parliamentarians today, 10 December, highlights 27 countries where people’s religious freedom has been denied and abused in the past year. The report, presented by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for International . . . Read More

70 years since universal declaration, human rights ‘ignored and abused all over the world’

December 7, 2018 International Afghanistan, Andrew Brunson, China, Colombia, Dalits, Don Ossewaarde, Egypt, Ethiopia, Human rights, India, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Myanmar, New York, Pakistan, Religious freedom, Syria, Turkey, UN

Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Monday, 10 December, rights group ADF International has called for “recommitment” to the founding principles, which it says are being “consistently ignored and abused … all over the world”. Chief among those rights, ADF notes, is the . . . Read More

‘Next time we will not survive’ – Middle East Christian refugee

November 12, 2018 Aleppo, Batnaya, Beirut, Hasakah, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Lebanon, Middle East, Mosul, Qaraqosh, Raqqa, Refugees, Syria, UN

Boy outside a tent in a refugee camp in Lebanon. (Photo: World Vision)

As many as 80% of Syria’s Christians have left their country since the start of the civil war in 2011, while 50% of Iraq’s Christians have been uprooted since 2006, according to a report produced by Christian charities Open Doors International, Served and Middle East Concern last year, which said the . . . Read More

Pope and Assyrian patriarch ‘share suffering’ of Christians in Middle East

November 12, 2018 Assyrians, Iraq, Middle East, Minorities, Pope Francis, Syria

Pope Francis met with Mar Gewargis III, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, at the Vatican on Friday, 9 November. (Photo: Getty Images)

Pope Francis and the head of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Gewargis III, have called for an end to the violence against Christians in the Middle East, following their meeting in Rome on Friday, 9 November, reports Catholic news site Crux. The church leaders said both communities “shared . . . Read More

Iraq: More than 200 mass graves with thousands of bodies discovered

November 6, 2018 Iraq Anbar, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Syria, UN

Syrian forces excavate a site, said to be a mass grave, in the west of Raqqa governorate in December last year. (Photo: Getty Images)

More than 200 mass graves containing the remains of thousands of people killed by Islamic State have been discovered in northern and western Iraq, according to a UN report released on Tuesday, 5 November. The report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and UN Human Rights Office documents . . . Read More

Churches in Syria: ‘We live together or we die together’

September 26, 2018 Syria Aleppo, Armenians, Catholics, Churches, Greek Orthodox, Syria, Syriacs

The Syrian civil war seems finally to be drawing to a close, with Idlib province the last battlefield in a long and bloody conflict between government forces and rebel groups. Seven years of war has taken its toll, including the devastation of many Christian sites, which local communities are slowly . . . Read More

‘UN must recognise persecution of Christians in Middle East as genocide’

September 17, 2018 International Europe, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Jan Figel, Middle East, Sam Brownback, Syria, UN, Yazidis

At the moment of the photo taken, ISIS had just been pushed out of the home towns of these Christians. People were hoping and anticipating to return to their towns some day.

The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) is appealing to the United Nations to recognise the persecution of Christians in Iraq and Syria as “genocide”, reports the US-based National Review. The ECLJ, an affiliate of the American Center for Law and Justice, said a “genocide” declaration is necessary to . . . Read More

Attacks against Copts ‘among deadliest acts of religious persecution’ – report

September 14, 2018 International Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Copts, Egypt, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Lake Chad, Sahel, Somalia, Syria, Tony Blair, Women, Yemen

This is one of the fifty five photos that is part of the photo story "Renewed day by day," commissioned by World Watch Monitor, exploring the extensive damage to churches in Egypt's Minya region that took place in late August 2013.

Attacks by members of the Islamic State group against Egypt’s Coptic Christian community “were among the deadliest acts of religious persecution” last year, according a new report presented in Washington DC yesterday, 13 September. “Fifty-three per cent of ISIS attacks against the public in 2017 were aimed at the Coptic . . . Read More

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