Category: Christian refugees

Get ready for it! Syrians will be our next big batch of refugees…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..along with the Rohingya (but that’s another story)!

Last week I reported that Iraq had agreed to open its borders to fleeing Syrians (Syrian Christians being killed by rebels).  But, it appears that they have done so with great reluctance because they fear that Al Qaeda (Sunnis) will flow in with the Syrians.  I think it’s a legitimate concern for the mostly Shiite government in Baghdad.

Here the New York Times has the Iraqi anti-refugee theme outlined.

QAIM, Iraq — Muhammed Muafak decided he had had enough when Syrian Army mortar shells struck near his house while his family was having the iftar meal to end the daily Ramadan fast. He packed up his 10-member household in Bukamal, the Syrian border town where they lived, and fled here to this Iraqi border town.

He expected a warm welcome. After all, his country had taken in 1.2 million Iraqis during their recent war, far more than any of Iraq’s other neighbors, and had allowed them to work, send their children to public schools and receive state medical care.

Instead, Mr. Muafak found himself and his family locked up in a school under guard with several hundred other Syrians, forbidden to leave to visit relatives in Iraq or to do anything else.

“We wish to go back to Syria and die there instead of living here in this prison,” said Abdul Hay Majeed, another Syrian held in a school building, along with 11 family members. Mr. Majeed was refused permission for that either, he and other refugees said.

Alone among Syria’s Muslim neighbors, Iraq is resisting receiving refugees from the conflict, and is making those who do arrive anything but comfortable. Baghdad is worried about the fighters of a newly resurgent Al Qaeda flowing both ways across the border, and about the Sunni opponents of the two governments making common cause.

The NYT never did like that Iraqi government:

The contrast with the situation during the war in Iraq is stark. [Assad’s] Syria took in more Iraqis than any other neighbor, and was more hospitable than Jordan, which imposed tight restrictions on its 750,000 refugees’ freedom to work and use public services.

[….]

“If they don’t want us here, they should let us go back to our country,” said Thafir Khalel, who came Thursday. “It’s better to die there than be humiliated here.”

Looks like Iraqi government leaders have a legitimate fear!

Now, American troops have left Iraq, and Al Qaeda has switched sides, taking up arms against the Assad government.

Here is the story that link about switching sides sends you.

The presence of jihadists in Syria has accelerated in recent days in part because of a convergence with the sectarian tensions across the country’s long border in Iraq. Al Qaeda, through an audio statement, has just made an undisguised bid to link its insurgency in Iraq with the revolution in Syria, depicting both as sectarian conflicts — Sunnis versus Shiites.

[…..]

One Qaeda operative, a 56-year-old known as Abu Thuha who lives in the Hawija district near Kirkuk in Iraq, spoke to an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times on Tuesday. “We have experience now fighting the Americans, and more experience now with the Syrian revolution,” he said. “Our big hope is to form a Syrian-Iraqi Islamic state for all Muslims, and then announce our war against Iran and Israel, and free Palestine.”

Watch for it!  We have already given Syrians Temporary Protected Status and now I can hear the distant drumbeat—the clamor to bring more Syrians to America has begun (and it won’t be a clamor to save the Christians).  Will we be sure Al-Qaeda doesn’t sneak in here too?

Syrian Muslim Brotherhood rebel group killing Christian refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and in a surprise move, the Iraqi government has opened its borders to Syrian refugees.

Here is the story from Catholic News Agency about the persecution of Christians by the rebel forces attempting to bring down the Assad regime:

Damascus, Syria, Jul 23, 2012 / 04:50 pm (CNA).- The Syrian rebels’ attack on Damascus has allowed radical Islamist groups to attack Iraqi refugees, Christians allegedly loyal to the Syrian government and other civilians.

Local Christians have expressed dismay and outrage at the attacks on defenseless civilians, a local source told Fides news agency.

The rebel group Liwa al-Islam, a Wahhabi group whose name means “The Brigade of Islam,” has claimed responsibility for killing top generals in President Bashar Assad’s government. On the morning of July 23, its members also killed an entire Christian family in the Damascus neighborhood of Bab Tuma.

Militants blocked the car of Nabil Zoreb, a Christian civil officer. They ordered him, his wife Violet, and his two sons George and Jimmy to get out of the car. The militants then killed them all.

In southeastern Damascus, Islamist fighters with the Muslim Brotherhood ally Jehad al Nosra attacked the homes of Iraqi refugees. They ransacked the homes, burned them and forced the occupants to leave.

The refugees said “gangs of Muslim terrorists attacked and chased us.”

Syrians to Iraq!

For years refugees fled Iraq for safe harbor in Syria, but now that the Muslim rebels affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood are on the move in Syria, the refugee flow will reverse direction as Iraq opens its borders to Syrians.

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered his country’s borders to be opened up to allow Syrian refugees fleeing violence at home to enter Iraq, his office said on Monday.

There is more, read it all.

Speaking of the Muslim Brotherhood, if you haven’t followed the controversy in the US where Reps. Michele Bachmann and four other members of Congress are under fire (from Republicans!) for asking for Inspector General investigations of several federal agencies to ascertain the depth of penetration by the Brotherhood into those agencies, see my other blog, here.

Utah: Burmese refugee accused of murdering Christian girl is a Muslim

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Geez, I sure missed this one!  I’ve been wondering for years if the ‘diversity is strength’ gang in the US Refugee Resettlement Program had actually put Burmese Muslims (Rohingya?*) in the same apartment building as Christian Karen people in Salt Lake City.   Thanks to reader Melissa for spotting this lengthy story in the Salt Lake Tribune from right after the murder in 2008 of 7-year-old Hser Ner Moo that reports that the accused, whose case should be advancing in court this month, is a Muslim.

You really need to read the whole sorry and very sad story of the resettlement of these Burmese families in Salt Lake City by either Catholic Community Services or the International Rescue Committee.  “Mr. Tomorrow” worked (probably still works) for one of them.

In 2006, the U.S. invited thousands of Burmese refugees at Mae La to apply for resettlement. Cartoon and Pearlly signed up, believing America was going to save them. Their children would have a better education, and they would have the chance to work hard toward a house, a car, a more comfortable life.

But within weeks of their arrival in Utah in August 2007, Cartoon and Pearlly were confused.

They had been careful to ration the meat and rice provided by their resettlement agency, but now they were running low on food. They didn’t know how to find their resettlement caseworker, known by refugees as Mr. Tomorrow for his lack of follow-through. They couldn’t call for help because their phone wasn’t connected.

Gee, where have we heard that before?

Here, however, is the most important part of the story:

News of Hser Ner Moo’s murder raced across the ocean to Mae La [refugee camp—ed], where thousands of families believed immigration to the U.S. would be their salvation.

Some said her death proved America’s dangers. Perhaps refugees were sent to bad neighborhoods, home to gangs. Others worried she was killed because she was Karen. Some families skipped resettlement interviews, one of the first steps in applying to emigrate to the U.S.

The U.S. embassy finally posted a letter explaining the man accused in Hser Ner Moo’s death was not an American. He was one of their own, a refugee from Mae La.

Rage flashed through the muddy lanes where Hser Ner Moo had once skipped rope and played hide-and-seek. In the camp, tension lingers between the Karen and Muslims, and some choose to live apart. Hser Ner Moo and Esar had lived in separate sections of Mae La.

America had made them neighbors.

It is just as I thought when I first saw the story of the murder four years ago.  The multiculturalists’ myth is that decades of hatred and religious conflicts, more than a century in this case, can be simply forgotten when refugees are resettled in the great American melting pot.  Let’s put them all together and there will be love and understanding and religious harmony!—ahhhhh!

*For new readers:  I placed this post in my Rohingya Reports category, among others, however the ‘R’ word has not yet been used in connection to the alleged murderer (that I know of!).   You should know that there is an increasing drumbeat by the resettlement contractors, especially the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at the May 1 meeting, to bring more Rohingya Muslims to the US.

Catholics have no business being in Bosnia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The end result of Bill Clinton’s Bosnian war is that Bosnia will be a Muslim country.  Funny how it works—the building of a Caliphate.*  Muslims: countries like Bosnia are ours now and your country will be ours too one day.

See this very interesting story at Aid to the Church in Need about Catholic refugees who wish to return to their homes in Bosnia-Herzegovina and are being discouraged from returning.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops need to read this!  By the way, we resettled over 150,000 refugees (mostly Muslims) from the former Yugoslavia and the Catholic Bishops helped distribute them around the US.

In the past two months alone 800 Catholic refugee families living abroad turned to Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka to obtain assistance for their return to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thousands of refugees are likewise ready to come back. The chairman of the Bishops’ Conference for Bosnia and Herzegovina passed on this information at a recent meeting with the international Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need”. Those willing to return expected assistance from the Church in rebuilding their houses and restoring infrastructure. “That is, in fact, the job of the government,” he emphasised. However, Catholics received only a minimal fraction of the international aid.

The bishop complained about the lack of political will on the part of the Bosnian government and the international community to enable Catholics to return to Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this context he referred to a “well formulated strategy” aimed at eradicating the Catholic presence in the country. Individual politicians openly admitted in personal conversations, he said, that they felt Catholics had “no business being in Bosnia”.

Komarica stated that he has been struggling for many years to “create a state founded on the rule of law”. The Catholic Church simply wants to have the same rights as other sections of the population and “meet its obligation to work together for a better future for the country”, he said. It is “not good for Bosnia to exclude an entire ethnic group”, he added. In his view the Catholics of Croatian origin are “not guests, but the oldest ethnic group”.

Of the 835,000 Catholics who lived in Bosnia-Herzegovina before the war between 1992 and 1995, only 450,000 have remained. 40% of the population is Islamic and around 31% belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church. The rest belongs to other religious communities. Catholics still make up around 10% of the population.

*Update!  What a coincidence that I mentioned the Caliphate—reader Judith alerts us to an upcoming Caliphate conference (not in the Middle East) but right here in our very own Chicago in two weeks!

Some fruits of Samantha Power’s labor in Nebraska

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I told you about White House refugee czar Samantha Power and her foreign policy doctrine—Responsibility to Protect—which basically says war is o.k. when you are saving people.   So, the White House and the State Department were overjoyed to help the Islamist revolution in North Africa—in Tunisia, in Egypt and in Libya.

How is that working out now for the Arab Spring cheering squad at the White House?  Yesterday we learned that a leading Presidential candidate in Egypt said Christians must convert to Islam or leave the country (or pay the jizya).

We get them—not just the Christians but the Muslims as well!

We see that if things don’t go according to plan, we get the so-called “refugees” like the three chronicled in this news report from Lincoln, Nebraska.  Is that what Ms. Power means when she says “responsibility to protect?”

From KVNO Public Radio:

Lincoln, NE – The Arab Spring and accompanying violence might seem far away to most Nebraskans, but for some refugees now living in Lincoln, that devastation took place in their backyards.

Now just think about this.  The Tunisian featured in this article tells the reporter that he was already living in the US but went back for the revolution.   He says for their labors the revolution produced less freedom (we could have told him that is what happens when Islamic totalitarians take over).   So, oh well, he returned to his good life in Nebraska as a “refugee” from the Arab Spring.

“Everything we had before that could be considered the little freedom – we lost it,” Zahrouni said. “We wanted freedom, but we didn’t have freedom. We had less freedom than before So, it was really frightening. It was a long, long nightmare.”

Instead of fleeing the conflict in his country, Zahrouni chose to experience it head-on. He’d originally left Tunisia in December of 2007 when his wife was accepted into one of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s doctorate programs. But when news of the revolution first broke, he decided to return to his family in his home country, and witnessed a new beginning. Zahrouni would ultimately stay in Tunisia until the small country settled down before returning to Lincoln with his family.

[….]

“I suffered what they suffered, I’ve seen what they have seen, and I say, Guess what, they can survive it,’” he said. “If I didn’t go there (during the revolution), I would feel really bad to stay here. But now I feel comfortable and confident that Tunisia has a chance to survive, and probably, it already did.”  [But, I’ll stay here as a refugee in comfy America just in case—ed]

There should be a law!  If  someone is here in the US on some other VISA, or are a “refugee,” we should forbid that person from returning to his or her “home” country to participate in revolutions by forbidding their return to the US.  And, while we are at it, anyone here formally as a refugee or asylee should be banned from returning (unless it’s a permanent return!) to the country from which he or she supposedly escaped—like Somalia or Bosnia—for visits and vacations!