About 350,000 Syrian Christians have been forced to flee their homes. Many have been killed, sold into sex slavery, or forced into hiding. They are not going to U.N. refugee camps, where they often face further persecution, sources tell WND.
As U.S. and European leaders reach out with open arms to tens of thousands of Muslim refugees flooding into Europe, the groans of persecuted Christians in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan are increasingly drowned out.
President Obama announced Thursday that the U.S. will accept an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, on top of the 1,600 that have already arrived. The Syrian arrivals coming from United Nations refugee camps to date have been 95 percent Muslim.
When it comes to the plight of Christians, most of the voices of concern for "refugees" – whether they come from the EU, the White House, the Congress or in the media – fall silent, says a spokesman for the International Christian Concern.
The ICC posted an alert on its website Thursday that an estimated 30,000 Pakistani Christians have been forced to flee their homeland due to persecution from the Muslim majority in Pakistan. They are living in crude conditions in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Malaysia with little help from the United Nations or various international aid agencies. Christians in Pakistan are often jailed for their beliefs, their churches are bombed and their pastors killed. The president of Pakistan Christian Congress has urged the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries to open doors to the persecuted Pakistani Christians. Nazir Bhatti, who launched the Pakistan Christian Congress in 1985 and was forced to flee Pakistan in 1998 after he challenged the nation's Islamic blasphemy laws, has written leaders of the E.U., U.K., U.S. and other European countries asking that they receive Pakistani Christian asylum seekers, reported the website Christians in Pakistan.
Bhatti's plea comes after the announcement from Prime Minister David Cameron that the U.K. will accept 20,000 Syrian refugees, while Germany is welcoming 800,000, Spain is taking 20,000 and France 24,000. President Obama has previously committed to taking 5,000 to 8,000 Syrians over the next year, but his administration announced today it is considering increasing that number by 10,000.
Refugees or migrants? Despite all of the attention being given to Syrians as "war refugees," data from the United Nations refugee agency indicates that the majority may actually be economic migrants rather than true war refugees. The UNCHR data shows, for instance, that 75 percent of the so-called refugees flooding into Europe this year are men, and that only 51 percent are Syrian.
Bhatti has petitioned the leaders of U.K., Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania, Hungry, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and other E.U. member states to give refuge to Pakistani Christian asylum seekers by allowing them easy entry into their countries.
Lord George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent op-ed in the Telegraph, urged Britain to focus on taking Syrian Christians, saying they are the most vulnerable and repeatedly targeted victims of the Syrian civil war. While Carey said he welcomes Cameron's announcement to take in more Syrian refugees, the most targeted refugees are being left behind to face their Islamic killers. "But the frustration for those of us who have been calling for compassion for Syrian victims for many months is that the Christian community is yet again left at the bottom of the heap," Carey wrote.
Source: International Prayer Connect