Christians, Minorities Caught in Crossfire
by PETER JESSERER SMITH 07/01/2013 - National Catholic Register
WASHINGTON — Church leaders warned that more blood, martyrs and the end of the Church in Syria is the price Syria will pay if the U.S. decides to go ahead with plans to arm the rebel forces.
Syria’s two-year civil war between forces allied with ruling President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel opposition has devolved into a sectarian Shia-Sunni conflict with Christians and other minorities caught in the crossfire.
“We’re seeing what looks like an extermination of Christianity,” Bishop Nicholas Samra, head of the Melkite Catholic Church in the United States, told the Register. “It’s not a healthy situation to help either side militarily at this point.”
Bishop Samra said that Syria’s five Melkite bishops delivered a “bleak report” about the Church in Syria to him and other Melkite bishops gathered at their June annual meeting with Patriarch Gregory III Laham in Lebanon. He said Christians have lost an enormous amount of lives, and many are victims of kidnapping, mainly due to Islamist rebels.
“Our patriarch and all of our bishops are just calling for an end to all of the fighting and to create peace there,” Bishop Samra said. “We want to see what can be done by working relationships and by sitting down and talking, rather than shooting.”
After 27 months of bloodshed, the United Nations estimates that more than 90,000 perished in the bloody conflict as of April 2013, at a rate of 5,000 killings per month. CNN reports that U.N. sources say more than 30% of the country’s 22 million people have fled their homes: More than 1.5 million refugees have fled the country, while more than 4 million people are displaced in Syria itself.
Melkite Father Elias Rafaj, serving in the Houston area, told the Register that the Syrian priests and friends he has been in contact with tell him that the rebel forces are dominated by Sunni Islamists who have targeted other Muslim minorities, but particularly Christians.
Read more at the National Catholic Register website.