Tag: Syria

International Youth Day: Young Christians want to build peace

August 11, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Aleppo, Arauca, Asia-Pacific, Bangui, Blasphemy, Central African Republic, Colombia, Damascus, ELN, FARC, Indonesia, Iran, Jakarta, Java, Syria, UN, Venezuela, Yogyakarta, Youth

After years of war Colombia's young men and women want peace. (Photo: Open Doors International)

Ahead of the UN’s International Youth Day on 12 August, which this year has “Youth Building Peace” as its theme, World Watch Monitor takes a look at some of the challenges facing young Christians around the world and how they try to contribute to building peaceful societies. Many of the world’s . . . Read More

Seven Christians smuggled out of IS-held Raqqa

August 10, 2017 Syria Islamic State, Raqqa, Syria

Kurdish-led forces in Syria rescued seven Christians from IS-held Raqqa on Tuesday (8 August). “Our forces have saved two Armenian families,” said Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Turkmen and Circassian militias. The Syriac Military Council (SMC), a member of . . . Read More

Why Syrian and Iraqi Christians eye different futures

August 3, 2017 Syria Asylum seekers, Iraq, Refugees, Syria, UN, USA

Despite the violence, around 30,000 of Aleppo's 250,000 Christians have remained in Syria's ancient second city

Iraqi Christians who decide to flee the Middle East feel they have no future there, whereas Syrian Christians wish to return home because they believe they have a future there under President Bashar Al-Assad. That is the view of human rights lawyer and genocide expert Ewelina Ochab, who has interviewed . . . Read More

Iraqi Christians fear Kurdish agenda behind removal of mayor

July 28, 2017 Iraq Alqosh, Assyrians, Baghdad, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Syria

Assyrians protest in Alqosh against the removal of the Assyrian mayor by the Kurdish Regional Government. (Photo: AINA)

Iraqi Christians are increasingly fearful that the recent ousting of a Christian mayor by a pro-Kurdish council is evidence of a Kurdish agenda to usurp control of northern Christian-majority towns. Fayez Abed Jawahreh, the mayor of Alqosh, a Chaldean-majority town, was dismissed from office on 16 July by Bashar Al . . . Read More

‘Risk of genocide’ linked with level of religious freedom

July 25, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Genocide, Houthis, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, UN, Yemen

The civil war in Yemen has displaced over 3 million people like this woman who is sitting under a makeshift shelter at a camp for internally displaced persons in the northern district of Abs in Yemen's Hajjah province, on July 23, 2017 (Photo: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

Yemen is the country where the risk of genocide, or mass killing, rose most last year, says Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in its 2017 Peoples Under Threat index, which also includes a large number of countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian. Nine of . . . Read More

Legal limbo of Turkey’s Syriac Christian properties still unresolved

July 18, 2017 Turkey Mardin, Mor Gabriel Monastery, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syria, Syriacs, Turkey

Over the past five years, legal ownership of at least 100 ancient Syriac Christian properties in Turkey’s southeast has been seized and transferred to the Turkish state treasury, where the title deeds still remain. The government-confiscated properties include two functioning monasteries, including adjacent lands to the 4th century Mor Gabriel . . . Read More

Why are attacks on Egypt’s Coptic Christians getting worse?

July 14, 2017 Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Arab Spring, Cairo, Copts, Egypt, El-Arish, Hosni Mubarak, Iraq, Mohamed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, Syria, Yemen

Attacks on Christians in Egypt have intensified in brutality because of an influx of arms and foreign jihadis, lax border security and increased local hostility to non-Muslims, according to a leading UK academic. Dr Mariz Tadros of Sussex University’s Institute of Development Studies said that the suicide attack on a . . . Read More

G20 ‘missed opportunity’ to tackle major global issue: religious freedom

July 14, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Angela Merkel, China, Eritrea, G20, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Migrants, Refugees, Religious freedom, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

By not discussing international religious freedom at the G20 summit in Germany last weekend, world leaders failed to address the root cause of major global issues like the migrant crisis, says David Curry, CEO of Open Doors USA. As a result, “we can expect more violence from religious intolerance, a . . . Read More

More Christian than Muslim refugees in US under Trump, but fewer overall

July 14, 2017 Chaldeans, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Donald Trump, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Migrants, Mike Pence, Refugees, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, USA, Yemen

Christians account for a steadily growing share of refugee arrivals in the US, Pew Research has found, although the net number of Christian arrivals may in fact be shrinking. In its review of US State Department data, published on 12 July, Pew noticed a gradual increase in the numbers of . . . Read More

Syriac Christians in front line in battle against IS in Raqqa

June 30, 2017 Syria Islamic State, Raqqa, Syria

While the battle for Raqqa is raging on, Syriac Christians are among those on the frontline. They say they are fighting to liberate all Syrians but also “because Islamic State militants destroyed churches and forced Christians to convert to Islam”, reports Al-Monitor. Abboud Seryan and his colleague Aleksan Chmou are . . . Read More

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