Christians and other religious minorities in Syria have been targeted
for death, sexual slavery, displacement, cultural eradication and
forced conversion by ISIS.
Many of these persecuted Christians
hope to escape to the United States. They have been largely excluded,
with the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
admitting to officials at The Barnabas Fund, a Christian relief agency,
"There is no way that Christians will be supported because of their
religious affiliation."
According to data from the State
Department's Refugee Processing Center for Fiscal Year 2015, resettled
Syrian refugees were 97 percent Muslim. The Hudson Institute's Nina
Shea, in a November 2 article in National Review, showed that in the
past five years 53 out of 2,003 Syrian refugees accepted by the United
States have been Christians (about 2.5 percent of the total). But about
10 percent of Syrians are Christians.
IRD Religious Liberty Director Faith McDonnell commented:
"The
U.S. government's response has been woefully inadequate—neither helping
these minorities defend themselves and stay, nor providing them asylum
to leave.
"Christians cannot go to U.N.-run refugee camps because
there they face the same persecution and terror from which they fled. If
they are not in the refugee camps, they are not included in the
application process for asylum. The State Department knows this, but
continues to allow the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
to select refugees for asylum with no regard to the endangered
religious minorities.
"The blame is not just with the U.N. and the
administration. U.S. organizations who resettle refuges are also to
blame. This includes Christian groups that resist any focus on Christian
victims of ISIS, and oppose actions by Congress to welcome not just
economic migrants but also Christians and other religious minorities
victimized by ISIS.
"Other religious minorities—such as Jews,
Yazidis, Mandaeans, Shia Shabaks and Turkmen—are also being targeted,
and largely left out of refugee resettlement. Shea notes that only one
Yazidi was resettled in the U.S. in the past five years of Syria's civil
war, even though thousands of Yazidi girls are taken as sex slaves by
ISIS."
McDonnell's full article can be found on http://www.charismanews.com/stream.org/us-christian-groups-p rioritizing-muslim-over-christian/%20 - The Stream .
Source: http://www.charismanews.com/ -