Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqi Christians: the good news and the bad news

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have two stories on Iraqi Christians, one optimistic and the other sad. The first is an item from Zenit, a Roman Catholic news service. It’s from February, but I just came across it. Headlined Iraqi Election Seen to Invite Return of Christians, it says,

Results of the recent local Iraqi elections include the defeat of extremist religious groups, and the possible return home of Christian exiles, said an auxiliary bishop of Baghdad.

….The count on Feb. 5, with 90% of votes weighed in, showed that the Islamic religious parties had suffered losses. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s party, on the other hand, won a significant part of the vote. Official results are expected at the end of the month.

Bishop Abouna reported to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that this news “delighted” the Christians who were forced to emigrate due to sectarianism and the violence of the post-Saddam stage.
 
….Underlining the peaceful environment during and after the elections, he affirmed, “This will make [Christians] think differently and may encourage them to start returning.”

The bishop explained that many Christians believe that “a more secular government will favor minority religious groups” more than religious parties would.

Although Maliki and his party have “strong religious leanings, they have pursued a non-sectarian agenda.”

Now a story from yesterday in the Christian Post, 4 Christians Killed Within 48 Hours in Iraq.

Four Iraqi Christians were murdered within two days by unknown assailants, according to a Christian persecution watchdog group.

“The killing of four innocent people within the last two days has put a renewed fear in our hearts,” said Julian Taimoorazy, president of Iraqi Christian Relief Council, in an interview with International Christian Concern. “What is important is to keep these continuous atrocities in the media and on the policy makers’ radars. What we need is a more safe and secure Iraq for all of Iraqi’s especially for the Christians who have faced ethno-religious cleansing.”

The story also relates these facts, some of which surprised me:

Since 2003, some 750 Christians have been killed in Iraq, according to Archbishop Louis Sako, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Kirkuk. Dozens of churches have also been bombed.

Islamic extremists often target Christians under the assumption that they are supporters of the coalition force since they share the same faith as the West.

Constant death threats, lack of economic opportunities, and security instability have forced more than half of the Iraqi Christian population to flee the country within the past five years.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees reports that although Iraqi Christians make up only three percent of Iraq’s population, they account for nearly half of the refugees leaving the country.

I knew about the disproportion of Iraqi Christian refugees, but didn’t realize it was that large. Almost half the Iraqi refugees are Christians.

But what surprised me is the figure of some 750 Christians killed since 2003. Every death is sad, but 750 is a much lower figure than I would have guessed. It includes a disproportionate number of clergy and leaders, of course, since killing leaders terrorizes and bewilders a population. I somehow had the idea that many thousands of Christians had been killed. I’ll have to check on this further.

Salt Lake City: Refugee gang violence continues

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I say “continues” because according to this report in the Salt Lake Tribune, law enforcement in Utah has been dealing with gangs that include refugees since the ’70’s.    First it was Asians such as Vietnamese and Cambodians, later Bosnians (remember the 2007  mall killings by a Bosnian refugee) and now it’s Iraqis and Somalis.  I didn’t know that this was a big issue in Salt Lake City, although we have  previously chronicled gang violence involving Somalis in Minneapolis (here) and Seattle (here).

We follow the news fairly closely and so I was especially shocked to see that this report opens with a description of the shooting death of an Iraqi refugee who had opened fire in a public place just this past January.    Did this make the national news?

After 19-year-old Hussein Al-Rekabi opened fire into a crowd at a downtown nightclub in January, a mob of his angry relatives screamed death threats at officers who responded.

A Salt Lake City police officer shot and killed Al-Rekabi, who had ignored a command to stop and injured two bystanders near Club Bliss at 404 S. West Temple around 1:15 a.m. on Jan. 24.

Al-Rekabi’s family includes documented members of an Iraqi gang, Detective Nate Clark of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office Metro Gang Unit said Thursday.

At the shooting, “It was ‘You guys are dead.’ But also, ‘Get out of our country and leave our oil alone,'” Clark said Thursday at the Utah Gang Conference, during a session about gangs that formed after refugee groups arrived in Utah.

Refugees are joining existing gangs or forming their own.

Metro Gang Unit investigators say they’re now seeing newer refugees, such as young men from Somali and Sudan, latching onto American gang culture. From listening to hip hop to mimicking gang dress, some are forming their own gangs and others are assimilating into existing gangs, Clark said.

The Center for Immigration Studies released a report last fall on the extent of immigrant gang violence in the US, here.

The Salt Lake Tribune has written extensively on refugee issues in Utah, use our search function for ‘Salt Lake City’ to learn more about the problems the city faces.

Senator Bob Casey: bring more Iraqis to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey Bob, how about we put them all in Pennsylvania then. 

Casey, a Democrat of course, is chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee (Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia) that held a hearing yesterday on Iraqi refugees.   So typical of the mainstream media, this seems to be the headline news out of the event.

The chairman of the panel, Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, agreed that the United States should not ignore the plight of Iraqis who fled their homes. “It presents to the American people and to the world a moral challenge as well as one that is related to security,” he said.

Casey suggested the U. S. government do more to resettle Iraqi refugees in the United States.

Does no one ever have the guts to mention the PROBLEMS that Iraqi refugees are having when they get here!  No jobs!  Lousy apartments!

This Voice of America story that I am quoting from discusses testimony by two women who both pretty much said:

Laipson and Aossey are calling on the United States and the international community to do more to support humanitarian efforts aimed at fostering conditions that would allow a safe and sustainable return of Iraqi refugees.

There was a third testimony by a professor of Middle East Studies, an Iraqi, from Fredericksburg, VA of all places.    His testimony is here.   He has a few lines near the end about third country resettlement, but the bulk of his testimony is about how to make the lives better for Iraqis in the Middle East and how to get them back to Iraq!      Not worthy of quoting I suppose.

Ironically, Professor Al-Tikriti of Fredericksburg, VA must know about unhappy resettled Iraqis in light of the two families that left Virginia within the last two weeks to return to Syria!

Go back and look at the testimony presented at the hearing and wonder how Senator Casey grabs the headlines by asking that more Iraqis be brought to the US.

UN says 5,000 Iraqi refugees are coming to U.S.

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know where these refugees fit into our overall program, but a report from Syria says:

Around 12,000 Iraqi refugees living in Syria will be resettled in Europe and the United States, according to an official from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Germany, the US, Canada,The Netherlands and other countries, have agreed to host a number of Iraqi refugees in Syria, an unnamed source told Adnkronos International (AKI).

….”Germany has agreed to take in 2,500 refugees, and the same with The Netherlands, while the United States 5,000 others,” the official source told AKI.

“Some of the refugees will attend classes that will help them integrate to their new host country.”

I guess that’s where they will learn that the United States is a land of milk and honey that will provide everything for them and set them up in their former professions. Then they’ll get here and find that is as far from the truth as can be. They’ll be living in poverty and frustration and will end up hating America and Americans. Great program!

The report continues, with no context to these remarks:

The UNHCR source, however, rejected the notion that religion played a role in the selection of candidates.

“There is no preference about this point and among the conditions by host countries there is absolutely no discrimination in this sense,” said the source.

Who said religion did play a part? We don’t know. But it is preposterous that religion doesn’t play a part in the selection. Muslim refugees should be encouraged to go home unless there are specific reasons they can’t. Christian and other minority refugees should be resettled in third countries in places where they can join people from their particular sect, unless there are specific reasons they can go home. Our stupid policy of nondiscrimination is one more example of how political correctness has turned the brains of otherwise intelligent people to mush.

Sponsor of Iraqi refugee bill seems clueless

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) is sponsoring H.R. 578, a bill whose purpose is “to address the impending humanitarian crisis and potential security breakdown as a result of the mass influx of Iraqi refugees into neighboring countries, and the growing internally displaced population in Iraq, by increasing directed accountable assistance to these populations and their host countries, facilitating the resettlement of Iraqis at risk, and for other purposes.”

Ann reported on Hasting’s bill in the last Congress, HR 6496, which did not pass. This is the same bill, reintroduced in January. You’d think he could at least have tried to find out if conditions are the same as when he introduced the original bill two years ago. At that time he referred to “the growing internally displaced population in Iraq.” That was before the surge, but perhaps Hastings hasn’t noticed that Iraq is no longer in the state of emergency it was then.

Today the American Chronicle has an article which confirms Hastings’s cluelessness. Headlined “Hastings Urges a ‘Humanitarian Surge’ for Iraqi Refugee Crisis,” it tells us:

(Washington, DC) Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) gave the keynote address on the Iraqi refugee crisis at a conference presented by the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University´s Washington College of Law.

His entire short speech is printed in the article. His heart seems to be in the right place (though who can really tell, given the left’s habit of dressing up horrible legislation in compassionate words), but much of the bill makes little sense in today’s conditions. The “findings” section, which lists “facts,” says:

(4) The Iraq Study group predicted that ‘[a] humanitarian catastrophe could follow as more refugees are forced to relocate across the country and the region.’.

Well, yes, they did predict it, but that’s not what’s happening now.  So why is it relevant in this bill? Another “fact”:

(14) United States policy is to admit at least 50 percent of the refugees referred by the UNHCR.

Since when is this our policy? I thought we had a numerical cap, not a percentage of anything.

In the entire bill there is no mention of helping Iraqi refugees to resettle back home. Hastings just reintroduced the bill word for word as if nothing has changed in two years. It goes without saying that he has no clue about the condition of Iraqi refugees who have come to the United States. So it’s all about aiding the refugees where they fled to and helping vulnerable populations within Iraq, as well as increasing the number of refugees to be resettled in the U.S. by at least 20,000.

Hastings’s speech showed no awareness of current conditions, and could have been given two years ago. It may have been for all I know, and was recycled for this occasion. In it he says:

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with the Ambassador of Iraq. We had a very informative discussion about this humanitarian crisis and what it will mean for the future of Iraq. During our meeting, I conveyed my hope that the Iraqi government would take greater responsibility to help refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

And what did the Ambassador reply? If I were the Ambassador I would have said, “You stupid jerk, don’t you know we’re paying people money to come back? We’re trying to solve the housing problem. We’re trying to solve the jobs problem. We want our people back to rebuild our country.”

But he’s a diplomat. I’m sure he didn’t say that. But we don’t know what he said; Hastings doesn’t tell us.

If there are hearings on this bill, I hope somebody tells Hastings and his fellow sponsors that most of the refugees can go home. We need to help that happen. And we need to specifically help those who can’t go home, like Christians and other religious minorities. Does the State Department know? Can someone call up Hastings and tell him?

But I get the feeling from his speech that he prefers to keep shoveling money out to the UN and the NGOs.