Refugees facing genocide deserve priority

The U.S. is going to be complicit in the world’s latest genocide, and we cannot let history repeat itself.

On Monday, World Refugee Day prompted thousands of people to flock to social media and insist that the U.S. take in more refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

We’ve seen the grim images and heard the harrowing tales many refugees have told about their perilous treks from war-torn Syria. I’ve heard these stories from members of my own family who have risked their lives by existing in a region ravaged by civil war.

I’ve also heard the tales my family has told me about their neighbors being executed in their churches during mass and of my mom’s uncle, who was shot dead in front of a grocery store in a predominantly Christian village.

We all can sympathize with those living in the tumultuous conditions Syrians are currently facing. It is not exclusively Christians who are exposed to these conditions — Muslims are as well. All Syrians are susceptible to the senseless violence that Muslim fundamentalists have inflicted on innocent civilians.

But the U.S. government has yet to address and assist the most vulnerable population in the Middle East and Syria — Christians. 

On June 14, the Refugee Processing Center reported that since January 1, 2015, the U.S. has processed 5,435 Muslims from Syria. Within that same time frame, American officials processed 28 Syrian Christians of the total 28,066 Syrian Christian applicants, which is 0.0009 percent of applicants and less than 1 percent of the total refugees processed.

Yet Syrian Christians constitute 10 percent of Syria’s population and have become the demographic that has fled Syria to neighboring countries for safety in the largest numbers.

Because President Obama and congressional Democratic leadership continue to maintain that the U.S. should not consider an applicant’s religion in deciding whether to grant refugee status, Syrian Christians — whom ISIS systematically targets, abducts and murders because they are Christian — are not prioritized, despite the persecution they face.

In spite of the issue being politicized across party lines, at the end of the day, these are human beings. We cannot afford to let partisanship prevent Christian Syrians from seeking refuge and human dignity.

Despite the U.S.’s executive failure to assist Syrian Christians, organizations around the world have recognized the brutalization of Christians for what it really is — genocide.

The European Parliament recognized for the first time in February that the ongoing conflict was a genocide targeting Christians and other religious minorities in Syria. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has deliberated over using the word “genocide” because it would mean the Obama administration would have to formally address it.

The United Nations 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which the UN enacted after the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust’s conclusion in 1945, outlines what the UN considers genocide. It contends that genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: acts such as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group in whole or in part, preventing births and the forcible transfer of children qualify as parts of genocide.

The treatment of Syrian Christians fits that bill.

While “discrimination” carries a heavy denotation, it is our country’s duty to protect those who are targeted at church and slaughtered because they’re Christian. We have a humanitarian duty to preserve the heritage of a religion that 2.2 billion of the world’s inhabitants follow, keeping the religion from going completely extinct in its place of origin.

Muslim lives are by no means less valuable than Christian ones — all life is sacred. But Christians are facing a direct threat that systematically seeks and punishes them, meaning the risk Syrian Christians face by virtue of worshipping a Christian God is elevated in comparison to their Muslim neighbors.

The U.S. needs to start considering the religions of the refugees they process or risk the blood on their hands when ISIS wipes Syrian Christians from the face of the earth.

While many U.S. politicians have avoided publicly acknowledging that there is a Christian genocide happening in Syria, conservative politicians such as Texas senator Ted Cruz and Florida governor Jeb Bush have supported bringing Syrian Christians to the U.S., and even Secretary of State John Kerry has labeled the genocide as such.

News outlets such as Vice and MSNBC taunted both candidates for doing so, suggesting these predominantly liberal outlets don’t even recognize the need for giving Syrian Christians priority over Muslim refugees. John Kerry’s exposure of the genocide to the public was largely ignored as well.

The media’s lack of coverage of Syrian Christian persecution completely disregards the value and humanity of this population, making it more difficult to bring awareness to their needs.

At this rate, the total extinction of Syrian Christians is becoming a possibility.

The Chaldean bishop of Aleppo, Syria, Antoine Audo, held a press conference in March from the UN’s headquarters in Geneva about the state of Christian persecution. According to the report, in only five years of conflict and persecution, the Christian population has dropped by two-thirds, from 1.5 million to 500,000. The number of Christians in Aleppo had fallen from 160,000 to just 40,000, and most of the population of Syrian Christians has fled to regions the Assad regime controls because it has historically protected Christians.

Escaping by sea to European countries is dangerous and has resulted in the tragic deaths of hundreds whose boats have capsized, and going to refugee camps in Europe has become dangerous because Muslim refugees have reportedly brutalized Christian refugees.

According to a study by the Gatestone Institute in May, of the 231 Christian refugees interviewed between February and March of 2016, 86 reported they had been physically assaulted by Muslim refugees or shelter security staff, and 70 had received death threats for their faith.

President Roosevelt’s silence about the Jewish people massacred during the Holocaust and President Clinton’s silence about the Tutsis in the Rwandan Genocide cost the world millions of lives when U.S. intervention could have spared them. The U.S. cannot afford to stand idly by while the 21st century experiences its own manifestation of American failure to stop international genocide.

President Obama and whoever succeeds him should not allow the extinction of Syrian Christians to blemish their legacy as leaders of the free world and commanders of a country that values human life and vows to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

As a country that prides itself on preserving religious heritage, religious liberty and human dignity, we must ensure that Syrian Christians do not become extinct.

They have nowhere else to turn for help, and the U.S. cannot ignore their pleas any longer.

Marlo Safi is a Senior Columnist for The Pitt News. She primarily writes about public policy and politics for The Pitt News.

Write to Marlo at mes26@pitt.edu