Tag Archives: Persecution

24 August 2024: ‘Democratic’ Ukraine Bans its National Church

On 24 August the Western-backed and Western-financed ex-President Zelensky (legally he has been a dictator since May) signed a law banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. (Zelensky is by race a Jew and by faith an atheist). This is because this Church is a Non-Western Church (just as the Ukraine is a Non-Western country), only a semi-independent part of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. This law will be enacted in 30 days’ time. What are the options?

First of all, Ukrainian Orthodox (= the vast majority of Ukrainians) will not attend any of the fake Churches, including the nationalist, pro-Nazi fake ‘Church’, invented by Washington by paying the Greek Patriarch to set it up. This is much to the present embarrassment of that Greek Patriarch, who, he now claims, naively thought that Ukrainians would attend such a Church, founded on theft and violence, encouraged by its gangster leaders, and composed of defrocked or unordained ‘clergy’.

This means that Ukrainian Orthodox will either stop going to church and wait for better times, or else they will try and go to church and get beaten up or killed or be arrested and put in prison. Christian blood on the streets is apparently what the Western Powers and the Greek Patriarch are sponsoring.

Some say that the Russian Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill, and the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, whose combined ages are 161, could do something else. Patriarch Bartholomew could dissolve his failed, fake Church on condition that Patriarch Kyrill officially gives the Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence, known as ‘autocephaly’. For only a Mother-Church, in this case, Moscow, can grant autocephaly. And if the Ukrainian Orthodox Church becomes autocephalous, Zelensky’s law will be meaningless.

That would be a miracle. If it happened, all the other Local Orthodox Churches, all 14 of them, would automatically recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a canonical, autocephalous Church, the 17th member of the Orthodox family. And Moscow and Constantinople could enter back into communion. And this could happen even with a Council of the whole Church.

However, such happiness is highly unlikely. What is likely?

Far more likely is that within the next few months Russia will take over the whole of the Ukraine, partly militarily and partly politically. The Ukraine will either entirely disappear as a nation-state, or else will exist with about one third of the territory it previously had and be fully dependent on Moscow. In other words, it will return exactly to its situation before Communist dictators created it after 1922. 100 years of errors will be over. Then the law banning the Church will be as irrelevant as ex-President Zelensky and his whole illegal government, which will have disappeared by then.

However, in such a case, just as Constantinople failed to force people to attend its fake Church, so Moscow will not be able to force people to attend a Church still dependent on it. As the Russian proverb says: ‘You will not endear yourself by force’. Or as the English proverb says: ‘You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’.

In any case, the problem will remain. Either the Russian Orthodox Church is a nationalist organisation, or else it is a multinational and missionary Church. It will have to choose. Either it adapts to and adopts other cultures, or else it will remain as a mononational Church with no multinational significance, as some of its senior bishops want.

 

 

The End-Game for the Ukrainian State and Church?

https://savetheuoc.com/press-release-ukraines-passage-of-8371-is-a-grotesque-violation-of-religious-freedom/

Militarily, the Ukraine is collapsing. In the east Russian forces are advancing some miles almost every day, as former Kiev strongholds, undermanned and underequipped, fall. In the north, the NATO-planned operation to ‘invade’ Russia through the southern tip of the province of Kursk with up to 15,000 elite troops (2,000 of whom are Polish, American, British and French, but wearing Ukrainian uniforms) is turning into a bloodbath. Over 4,000 of those troops are already dead or seriously wounded. Many others have surrendered. That was a last act of desperation, a last chance to do something big. It too has failed, as the NATO-led Ukrainians are outmatched and outgunned in every was.

Two and a half years ago, all that Russia wanted was a neutral Ukraine and human rights for its Russian inhabitants. The USA forbade that. And slowly the USA escalated this war, arming and training Kiev troops. Even only a few weeks ago, Russia was still prepared to open peace negotiations with Kiev. Other BRICS countries were encouraging this. That is over. Now NATO, not the Ukraine, has invaded Russia. The Kursk Operation was NATO-planned, NATO-trained, NATO-equipped and NATO-financed. Here there are echoes of Napoleon’s multinational Western invasion of Russia in 1812 and Hitler’s equally multinational invasion of Russia in 1941. When will the West stop invading Russia? After each previous invasion from Western Europe, Western Europe was entirely reshaped. Here is the future for it. As for the Ukraine, it no longer has any future as such.

Meanwhile, there is also chaos in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Seeing these words, some will say: ‘No news here, it always is in chaos’. The confusion comes from the existence of so many pseudo-Orthodox Churches – here, clearly, I am not referring to the many US-founded Baptist/Pentecostalist sects in the country, which have no pretence of being Orthodox. Apart from the very few actual Roman Catholics, who are very traditional and more or less condemn the Second Vatican Council as heretical (and who have in the past contacted me), there are the not very many ‘Greek Catholics’. Neither Greek, nor Catholic (!), they are better known as Uniats, as they vaguely pretend to be Orthodox, but think like very old-fashioned, very right-wing and very anti-semitic Polish Catholics.

Then come those who call themselves ‘Ukrainian Orthodox’. There is the tiny group around the long since defrocked ‘Metropolitan’ (or is it Patriarch?) Filaret of Kiev. Nobody, not even Constantinople or his own children (both with Metr Onufry), takes this money-greedy (ex-?) Communist criminal seriously. Then comes the ‘OCU’, (‘the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine’), a group of clerically-dressed thugs and defrocked clergy who have stolen many churches from the actual Ukrainian Orthodox Church and whose favourite instruments are not liturgical, but angle-grinders and bolt-cutters. Their ideology appears to be Neo-Nazi, though they do convince a few patriotic but unchurched Ukrainians that they are actually Orthodox. After all, they were founded by the Patriarchate of Constantinople under American orders and greased with millions of US dollars, now nearly six years ago. Now using the Catholic calendar for their services, no serious Orthodox takes them seriously.

There is in reality only one real, internationally recognised and canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 95% + of Ukrainian Orthodox belong to it, despite vicious persecution by the Neo-Nazi Ukrainian State. Its ruling hierarch is Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All the Ukraine. It is this Church which has today been banned by the Rada, or Parliament, in Kiev (269 votes for, 29 votes against). So much for American-sponsored freedom and democracy in the Ukraine. America is the new atheist Soviet Union, it seems. However, the law must be signed by the President, after which it can only be enacted after thirty days. Now things are moving quickly to stop this.

Constantinople warned the Ukrainians not to pass this law. Constantinople now knows that the OCU is fake and that the only real Church is the one Kiev wants to ban. Kiev has just disobeyed. Of course, Constantinople in itself has no power. But behind it stands the USA. The local Greek Archbishop there, Elpidiforos, who four years ago had his photograph taken with Biden, whom then he praised and told everyone to vote for, is now seen with Trump. Trump is much less keen on the Ukraine. His Catholic Vice-Presidential running-mate, Senator Vance, is a supporter of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Everybody knows that probably the next US President, if still unassassinated, will be Trump, and that he is fed up with giving money to subsidise everything in the Ukraine, which without US dollars would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Moreover, everybody knows that Patriarch Bartholomew is now aged 84. Archbishop Elpidiforos is very keen to succeed him. As also is Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis). The former has taken against the Ukrainian OCU, the latter very much did the dirty work to found it. Now a delegation from there is going to Kiev, as they wanted to before. (Let us hope that the dreaded SBU Kiev Secret Police, will not assassinate them). Constantinople is very keen for it not to be seen as the instigator of a law to ban the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Given the failure of its OCU fantasy, it may at last be ready to repeal its statute (‘tomos’ in Greek) which founded the OCU and re-establish relations with Metropolitan Onufry’s canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the rest of the Orthodox world, from which it has isolated itself.

Having implemented its OCU gaffe six years ago, this would be a convenient let-out (in American English ‘off-ramp’) for Constantinople. If Constantinople states that it was lied to by the OCU, it can unrecognise it. If it were sensible it could even offer Metr Onufry autocephaly for his Church. That would put the Moscow Church, of which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is de jure, but not de facto, a part, and to which for over thirty years it refused to grant autocephaly, in a tight corner. Of course, it may will not do this. Instead, some say that Constantinople wants to open up yet a new ecclesiastical structure in the Ukraine, an Exarchate, under the notorious and hated Archbishop Job (Getcha). That would be a great pity, because it now has an opportunity to improve relations with Moscow and embarrass it for Moscow’s uncanonical incursion into Greek-claimed Africa.

Our former friend, the former press secretary of the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II and journalist, Sergei Chapnin, who once came to our house, is heading for Constantinople now. We may hear more in the coming days. As the old Russian saying goes: ‘The circus left town, but the clowns stayed behind’.

 

 

A universal God has been declared! An examination for Orthodoxy

https://spzh.live/en/chelovek-i-cerkovy/80170-a-universal-god-has-been-declared-an-examination-for-orthodoxy

12 May 04:19

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A sermon on Anti-Pascha Sunday.

The time of trials is given to us to understand who we are. And not only we but also those who lead, guide and teach us how to live. This applies primarily to the Church because God will judge those on the outside (1 Corinthians 5:13).

As a priest I have experienced in my life the entire period of the recent history of the Church, starting from its revival in the territory of the former USSR and ending with what we have now. But now all Local Churches are undergoing examination, including those whom no upheavals have particularly touched until this time. The spirit of the new “wonderful” world, which is gradually beginning to enter its earthly possessions, offers each of them two options: to serve it or to be gradually destroyed.

The words of Christ that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” apply to the entire Church rather than its individual local branches. Where is the Church of St Genevieve, St Patrick of Armagh or St David of Menevia now?

Just a few decades ago, we had an unprecedented Orthodox boom. Huge editions of patristic books were published. And when the Internet entered society, hundreds of preachers began to teach people around the clock what an Orthodox Christian should be like. Teachers of faith of all kinds have been talking about Christ for almost forty years, but only a small part of them could show Him by their own example. After all, speaking and teaching about God is much easier than following Him.

Thus, we have built an Orthodoxy which externally looks fine but the strength of this structure can only be tested by an earthquake.

I remember a time when a hundred and fifty children could be baptised in a church per day. Where are these 30-40-year-old sons and daughters of God now? Are they living a spiritual life? Do they go to church or even know where it is?

The Lord has looked at us for decades and patiently awaited fruits. But now is the time for harvest. How many ascetics have grown in monasteries, righteous people in parish churches, and hierarchs in eparchial administrations during this time? I don’t know, only God knows.

Orthodox exams are taking place all over the world now. Each Local Orthodox Church is taking them. The best, privileged, one might say, position is held by those Orthodox who are openly hunted: those who are outlawed, persecuted in the media, lied against and slandered. Such a Church simply has no way out: nothing is left for it but to be crucified with Christ.

The worst position is occupied by those Local Churches that have turned from the brides of Christ into State concubines. Of course, they did not immediately decide on this adultery. It happened gradually, step by step. At first, it was necessary to make small concessions, and then to descend lower and lower.

All these processes vividly manifested themselves during the coronavirus period when, for the sake of fear, it was allowed to believe that physical death could settle in the Chalice, which is given to us as the source of eternal Life. Therefore, commune with disposable spoons, don’t trust God, trust the WHO. And do not let people go to services, close the churches for Easter and do not celebrate liturgies. And those who did not obey and did not want to violate their priestly oath received hefty fines.

All this was approved by the priesthood, which obediently adapted to the requirements of the state authority. The next step is to recognise the schismatics, then to start blessing non-traditional LGBT marriages, and so on.

There are also those who at the official level have rejected Christ and the Gospel, replacing them with national ideology and military-political doctrine. The clergy who disagree with this are banned or even imprisoned. But can all these bans be seriously considered canonically justified if they come from people who have become servants of Caesar instead of God, essentially betraying their soul to the devil?

And in recent times, among the faithful, a special type has appeared – “couch ascetics of piety”. They destroy all the “enemy filth” day and night with the machine-gun burst of their comments on the Internet. Their religion is anger. They do not understand that the only thing a person needs in this world is to learn to love the Lord and all people with all their soul.

All we need is to immerse our spirit in God and remain in Him forever. Neither in politics, nor in war, nor in Internet news, but in God. But only a few are capable of hearing this.

Judgment is approaching. Weeds have grown and multiplied all over the Earth. In the Church of Christ, there are more and more propagandists, political officers and simply opportunists. what do they direct the zeal of their flock? To hate sinners! That’s their main goal. The essence of their faith is war with global evil. But they do not see stubbornly that they are this very evil.

The Gospel calls us to be clothed in Christ, to become a renewed person. “No, this is not true,” teach modern preachers, you should kill other people “for the sake of Christ” – this is what we bless and inspire you to do. And yet the first Christians also lived in very difficult times. But for some reason, they did not care at all about the political situation of their empire; nor did they worry about either external or internal enemies.

They were worried only about one thing – whether their name was written in the Book of Life or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Kiev Dictatorship has not been able to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

https://spzh.media/en/zashhita-very/79475-why-hasnt-the-authorities-banned-the-uoc-yet

Why haven’t the authorities banned the UOC yet?

28 March 14:01
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Author: Kirill Aleksandrov

The campaign to ban the UOC has entered a new stage. Journalists are jailed, MPs can be sanctioned, and the West made the first anti-church publication. What’s going on?

After the attack on March 12, 2024, on UOJ journalists and church rights activists by the SBU, it was expected that this would catalyze the adoption of the anti-church bill 8371 banning the UOC (along with the final seizure of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra). With the journalists being silenced and rights activists intimidated and detained, it should be painless to vote to ban the Church, according to the logic of the orchestrators of these events.

However, something went awry. The vote, slated for March 20, 2024, had to be postponed. MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak announced on his Telegram channel that bills were being removed from the agenda altogether. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, many deputies, including those from the presidential faction “Servant of the People”, simply sabotage meetings and do not come to work in the Verkhovna Rada. Secondly, the Rada has accumulated quite a lot of unpopular, controversial, and scandalous bills. As IT specialists say in such cases, applications begin to conflict with each other.

In other words, using administrative resources, you can push through a vote on one scandalous bill, but not on all at once. Therefore, administrative resources have to prioritize bills, while parliamentarians calculate which bill’s vote could cause them more tangible troubles.

As it turned out, Bill 8371 banning the UOC is the biggest trouble, not only to the country as a whole, but also to each individual deputy personally.

Amsterdam’s warning

On March 15, 2024, UOC lawyer Robert Amsterdam wrote a letter to the parliament speaker and members of parliament, not for the first time explaining that bill 8371 is unconstitutional and unlawful, and its adoption will not only tarnish Ukraine’s image as a non-democratic state but also expose the MPs who vote for it to certain packages of Western sanctions. Moreover, this applies not only to the vote in the Verkhovna Rada but also to other persecutions against the UOC: seizures of churches, beatings of believers, and so on.

One of the most well-known sanction packages of this kind is the so-called “Magnitsky List”. But in many countries, there are similar lists that include officials and public figures who violate fundamental human rights. According to R. Amsterdam, these lists include individuals for much less significant human rights violations than those committed against UOC believers in Ukraine.

Amsterdam’s warning caused a very nervous reaction in the Verkhovna Rada, which the lawyer himself described as apoplectic.

This means that the deputies took the warnings seriously and had second thoughts to the effect whether it was worth playing with fire, as sanctions may involve entry bans to EU countries, the USA, asset freezes, and other dismal consequences.

In view of Amsterdam’s warning, an emergency meeting of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy was convened in the Verkhovna Rada on March 18, 2024, and they were so outraged by the activities of the American lawyer that they called his warnings threats and decided to complain to the SBU. MP from the party of former President P. Poroshenko’s “European Solidarity” Iryna Herashchenko called the warnings fake, while pressure on deputies – interference in the work of state institutions. She even wondered if sanctions should be imposed on R. Amsterdam.

However, Mrs. Herashchenko did not consider that, firstly, imposing sanctions against human rights defenders for their legitimate human rights activities is akin to authoritarian, not democratic countries. Secondly, by her excessive reaction to the warnings, she (like other MPs) actually indicates that these warnings sound quite serious and authoritative. Well, and thirdly, if, for example, adults warn a child not to put nails in the socket because it will shock them, does it mean pressure on the child and an infringement of their freedom?

They will take a different path

Apparently, Amsterdam did make an impression on the Verkhovna Rada MPs, as the authorities decided to first prepare Western public opinion for the adoption of the anti-church bill 8371, and only then put it to a vote.

The head of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, Mykyta Poturaev, suggested sending a delegation of MPs and representatives of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches to the US to try to explain to the American establishment that violating the right to freedom of conscience is not considered a violation as long as it is directed against the UOC.

One might assume that this attempt will be unsuccessful, since both the US and European countries are perfectly aware of what human rights are and what constitutes their violation. However, there is still a certain hope for success, as it was the Americans who lobbied for the creation of the OCU and subsequently provided it with active support and assistance. Moreover, this support was demonstrated by representatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, in our opinion, American lobbyists for the OCU did not anticipate that it would come to the point of forcible seizures of churches, mass violations of legislation during the re-registration of communities, and now to the prohibition of the UOC at the legislative level.

On March 21, 2024, Ukrainian political analyst Kostiantyn Bondarenko announced on his Telegram channel that the Office of the President had ordered several Western editions to publish articles against the UOC, in defense of the anti-church bill 8371, justifying the persecution of the Church, as well as discrediting lawyer R. Amsterdam and his human rights activities. K. Bondarenko also mentioned the considerable budget for such an order – over $2.5 million in March and April 2024.

No sooner said than done – and on March 22, 2024, the first customized article appeared in The Wall Street Journal titled “Is Religious Liberty ‘Under Attack’ in Ukraine?” Its author, a certain Jillian Kay Melchior, believes that liberty is not under attack in Ukraine, but “the country faces a dilemma in how to deal with an Orthodox church controlled by Russia” and with R. Amsterdam, who spreads fakes about persecution of the Church.

The text of the article itself gives the impression that it was written by poorly talented authors in Ukraine, offering blunt narratives and unsubstantiated claims. If Jillian Melchior is indeed an American journalist, why didn’t she even bother to edit the following paragraph: “Five years ago, the Patriarch of Constantinople recognized the fully independent, self-governing Orthodox Church of Ukraine. But the ROC and the UOC-MP refuse to recognize the OCU”?

Firstly, there is no UOC-MP in nature (this is an invention of the Church’s internal Ukrainian enemies), there is only the UOC. Secondly, the right to recognize or not recognize the decisions of the Patriarch of Constantinople is part of religious freedom, the right to freedom of belief.

Any community, any believer can recognise or not recognise the decisions of the Patriarch of Constantinople, just like any other religious leader, which is their constitutional right.

The content of the article contains so many unsubstantiated statements and accusations that there will be a significant workload for lawyers and human rights defenders to hold the publication accountable for causing moral harm and baseless discredit. For instance, it claims that the UOC-MP provided material support for Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the East of Ukraine in 2014. Where is the evidence? For such a statement is definitely hazardous for one’s reputation.

In the United States, as in other developed countries, there is a clear distinction between the actions of individuals and the actions of organizations. In other words, we speak about individual responsibility vs. collective responsibility. The fact that individual believers and even priests of the UOC supported Russia’s aggression does not in any way prove the guilt of the entire Church.

In this regard, we cannot ignore the recent statement by the head of the SBU, V. Maliuk. On March 26, 2024, in an interview with “Facts ICTV”, he stated that to date, the court has sentenced 23 clergymen. And a total of 37 suspicions have been announced to representatives of the UOC clergy, with more than 80 criminal cases opened. Let’s reiterate it: 23 convictions! And now let’s compare this figure with the numbers of traitors in the SBU itself. Back in 2016, the SBU published on its website a list of its former employees who defected to Russia, which consisted of 1391 (!) people, including one major general and 47 colonels.

Simon Shuster in his book “Showman” about Volodymyr Zelensky quotes former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, who said that at the beginning of the full-scale war, the most desertions among the security forces were in the SBU. The exact number was not given, but it was said that “their departure depleted the ranks of the SBU.” So where are the bills to ban the SBU? Where are the accusations of undermining national security? Where are the calls to hold the entire SBU accountable for the actions of these employees?

It can be assumed that such an experienced lawyer as R. Amsterdam will certainly use these facts as arguments in support of his position.

Actions in defense of the UOC

Supporters of the UOC are also not sitting idly by, but taking vigorous actions to defend their Church. On March 26, 2024, the United Nations Ukraine website published a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “On the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine”. It asserts that over the past three months, “clergymen and parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued to experience intimidation.”

The report describes several cases of violent seizure of temples. On the same day, an interview with the UOC lawyer, Archpriest Nikita Chekman, was published on the YouTube channel of the NGO Public Advocacy, a human rights organization. The interview discusses specific violations of the rights of UOC believers, forcible seizure of temples, searches at the Center for Legal Protection of UOC Believers, arrests of journalists from the UOJ, and so on.

These facts of violations of believers’ rights will be disseminated among international human rights organizations and will also be heard at the UN Human Rights Session.

In other words, defenders of the UOC are doing everything possible to draw the attention of the international community to violations of UOC believers’ rights. And in competition with adversaries of the UOC trying to prove the opposite, defenders of the UOC seem to have a more fair chance to win. After all, there are so many offenses committed over the past 10 years that hiding or misinterpreting them is no longer possible. Moreover, most of them are well documented and formulated as statements to law enforcement and judicial authorities of Ukraine.

In addition, the Ukrainian authorities have decided to take actions that are almost zero-tolerated in the West. We are talking about encroachments on journalistic activity and the work of lawyers. Unfounded arrests of Orthodox journalists and gross unlawful interference in legal practice are perceived extremely negatively in the West.

But relying on the assistance of the international community and the reaction of Western countries to the violation of the right to freedom of conscience in Ukraine is not enough. The most important thing is the steadfastness and fortitude of believers within the country.

The guarantee of the existence of the UOC is not the protection from American or other lawyers, but the fidelity of believers to their Church, the readiness to defend their religious beliefs despite threats and intimidation.

You can take away the temple, but you cannot take away faith. You can illegally re-register a community, but if the community confirms its loyalty to the UOC and its Primate Metropolitan Onuphry, then it remains in the fold of the Church, and people continue to be in communion with all Christians as members of the Body of Christ. This cannot be fought or overcome by any anti-church laws or prohibitions. Our strength is in the fidelity to our religious choice, fidelity to Christ, in fulfilling His commandments.

What might happen next

Most likely, the anti-church bill 8371 will be put on hold for some time. They will wait for the reaction of Western society to the commissioned articles against the UOC and its defenders. Perhaps they will send a delegation of officials and representatives of various denominations to the United States, who will try to convince their counterparts that there is no persecution for faith in Ukraine. Unfortunately, things like church raids and illegal re-registrations of UOC communities in favor of the OCU will continue. But the decisive steps of the authorities to ban the UOC (or the absence of such steps) will mainly depend on the situation on the fronts.

This is all nothing new. Any authority, in various failures, tries to redirect public anger to someone else. It has always been this way. Let’s remember the very first persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero. When in 64 AD almost the entire Rome burned down and the citizens guessed that the emperor had himself set fire to the city, then the authorities, without much thought, accused the Christians of arson.

A new religion, incomprehensible, suspicious – is a very convenient target to redirect the crowd’s anger. The same thing can happen today.

If military failures follow, the authorities may intensify persecution of the Church so that Ukrainian society sees the UOC as an enemy, shifts its focus to dealing with it, and does not ask inconvenient questions from the authorities. But this is only one of many factors that will influence the situation. The opinions of Western countries and the struggle for power within Ukraine will also have their impact, inter alia.

Anyway, the most important thing is God’s providence, which can steer the situation in ways that no one currently anticipates. “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

The Silent Exodus of Syria’s Christians

Posted GMT 2-9-2013 4:10:
http://www.aina.org/news/20130208221023.htm

In Syria’s rebellion, no religious or ethnic group has been spared horrific levels of loss and suffering, but its 2,000-year-old Christian minority is now facing a distinct persecution.

Under the cover of war and chaos, this group, which alone lacks militias of its own, is easy prey for Islamists and criminals, alike. These assaults are driving out the Christians en masse. This 2,000-year-old community, numbering around 2 million is the largest church in the Middle East after Egypt’s Copts, and it now faces extinction. Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the East, despite recent heart surgery, is now constantly on the road in Lebanon and Iraq trying to cope with the refugee crisis. He wrote to me today:

“We are witnessing another Arab country losing its Christian Assyrian minority. When it happened in Iraq nobody believed Syria’s turn would come. Christian Assyrians are fleeing massively from threats, kidnappings, rapes and murders. Behind the daily reporting about bombs there is an ethno-religious cleansing taking place, and soon Syria can be emptied of its Christians.”

Official information and media reports about the Christians’ fate has been sparse. A new report yesterday, by Nuri Kino, a Swedish journalist of Assyrian background, sheds valuable light on the atrocities visited upon the Christians inside Syria, and their ordeals in attempting to escape, relying as they must on exploitative human-trafficking networks that have sprung up. Entitled “Between the Barbed Wire,” the report resulted from a trip sponsored by a Swedish charity, the Syriac Orthodox Youth Organization, to assess the needs of refugees. It is based on over a hundred interviews this past Christmas with Christian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon. The refugees and the Lebanese bishops whom Kino and his team interview relate that Christians are leaving in a torrent. Once they cross into Lebanon, guided by Middle Eastern versions of “coyotes” through a harrowing series of checkpoints
guarded by various sides in the conflict, they mostly seek out the local Christian communities for help. A clearly overwhelmed Archbishop George Saliba, on Mount Lebanon, says about the refugees: “I want to help as many as I can, but it is not sustainable. We have hundreds of Syrian refugees who arrive every week. I don’t know what to do.”

Elsewhere in Lebanon, St. Gabriel’s monastery has opened its 75 unheated rooms to over a hundred refugees. In another Lebanese Christian town, the Syrian Catholic patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Josef III has converted a school building into a shelter for the hundreds of refugees there now and the others constantly arriving. The patriarch describes it as the “great exodus taking place in silence.” He also says he houses Christians who fled several years ago from Iraq. All of the Christian towns visited for the report are scrambling to keep up with the influx of Syrian Christians. Church
leaders were grateful for the beds, washing machines, heaters, and medicine brought by the Swedish visitors.

Some of the Syrians say they plan to stay in Lebanon until Syria “calms down” and they can return to their homes. Many others say going back is “unthinkable” and are making plans to try to get to Europe either on valid visas or by paying smugglers the going rate of $20,000. They are largely small-business owners and skilled
professionals — an engineer and his family, a jeweler and his, a hairdresser, a medical student, etc. Many hope to be smuggled to Sweden and Germany, where they can receive some state subsidies until they find work.

The town of Sodertalje seems to be a popular destination, with 35 new Christian families arriving from Syria each week. Kino, himself a citizen of Sodertalje, relates that there are already many Syrian Christians living there, and Arabic is more common than Swedish. The refugees were panic-stricken, pointing to some horrifying triggering event that forced them out — a kidnapping of a relative, a murder, or a robbery. They feel they are targeted for being Christian, which means that militants and criminals can assault them with impunity. Some point to a government that fails to protect them; others to Islamists rebels who want to drive them out. A refugee tells Kino: “Two men from a strong Arabic tribe decided one day to occupy our farmland, just like that. When I went to the police to report, I was told there was nothing they could do. The police chief was very clear that they would not act, as they didn’t want the tribe to turn against the regime.”

A woman from Hassake recounts how her husband and son were shot in the head by Islamists. “Our only crime is being Christians,” she answers when asked if there had been a dispute. A father says: “We’re not poor, we didn’t run from poverty. We ran from fear. I have to think about my twelve-year-old daughter. She’s easy prey for kidnappers. Three children of our friends were kidnapped. In two cases they paid enormous ransoms to get the children back, and in one case they paid but got the child back dead.”

Another man attests: “In Syria, you don’t know who is your friend and who is your enemy. The wealthy have it the worst. Criminals wait in line to kidnap them.” The refugees all fear the Islamists. When the jihadi rebel units show up and take over a town, like Rasel-Eyn, it loses its Christian population over night. One man from there tells Kino: “The so-called Free Syrian Army, or rebels, or whatever you choose to call them in the West, emptied the city of its Christians, and soon there won’t be a single Christian in the whole country.”

There is no complete data on the number of refugees. How many Christians have fled is not known and escapees continue to come across the border each day. We are only beginning to understand the peril they face. Archdeacon Youkhana pleads: “The world must open their eyes to the plight.”

By Nina Shea

National Review Online

Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers,
March 2013).

How Aleut Orthodox were sent to US Concentration Camps

There is a sad rivalry about who first invented the concentration camp. Some say that it was the Spanish in Cuba in 1896, others point to the British in South Africa in 1900. However, long before this, one can read of pagan Romans herding captive peoples into military compounds in the first centuries AD and castle-building Norman and Teutonic knights herding peasants into ‘villages’ for enserfment in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. And what, after all, was the fate of Native Americans? It was to be sent to ‘reservations’ – code for concentration camps. Only seventy years ago, the Native Orthodox people of North America also endured the same fate.

Many may know that some 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to concentration camps in the American War against Japan for control of the Pacific rim between 1941 and 1945, even though some 60% of these were American citizens. However, after the Japanese attack on Unalaska, from 1942 on, the Aleuts of America received the same treatment, as recounted in a recent film, ‘Aleut History’. This concerns the nightmarish deportation of the native peoples of the Aleutian and Pribylov Islands to Alaska.

All those who had even one eighth native blood were deported by order of Washington. The natives were not told where they were being taken, but were packed onto warships by force and sent to four different concentration camps. Conditions were appalling – hunger, the freezing cold, disease and death faced them. One federal agent who expressed his indignation received an official reprimand. At one camp, in the village of Killisnoo, the deportees were forced to drink muddy water and sheltered from Alaskan temperatures in unheated hutments. Their salvation came from native Tlingits who gave them blankets, salt and medicine. The petitions of the women for food and warmth for their children and requests for humanitarian aid were ignored by the authorities. This camp recorded the highest rate of mortality of any of the camps.

On Barnett Inlet the Aleuts were settled in the cabins of a long-abandoned canning factory. There was no heating, electricity, water or beds and hungry wolves roamed around them. Petitions were ignored and when, finally, the deportees were allowed to return to their homes in Unalaska in 1945, they found that their houses had been ransacked by American soldiers. Moreover, the soldiers had also ransacked the Aleuts’ Orthodox churches. A similar situation existed in the camp by Lake Ward. Deportees, both adults and children, in all the camps were infected by TB, pneumonia and skin diseases. Chronically undernourished, many died from hunger and lack of medicine.

The men were forced to work without pay in various sea-related tasks and told that if they refused, they and their families would have to stay in the camps for the rest of their lives. They were not allowed to move away or seek paid work elsewhere. To this day some visit the graves of those who died in this exile. They claim that the sheer cruelty of the US government was conditioned not by the state of war, but by inherently racist attitudes. One is reminded of the old cowboy saying: ‘The only good Indian is a dead one’.

Note:

1. ‘Aleut Internment Camps: The untold US atrocity’ (CENSORED NEWS, 8.11.12)

This article is based on that of 17.12.2012 written by Vladislav Gulevich: http://ruskline.ru/opp/2012/12/15/ssha_konclager_dlya_aleutov/