FROM ATLAS SHRUGGED
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Sister Hatune of the Syrian-Orthodox monastery in Warburg, Germany
MUSLIMS RAPE,TORTURE, MUTILIATE CHRISTIAN GIRLS IN IRAQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaaRA8WQ9yE&feature
Frank Kitman edited and translated a most heartbreaking testimony by Sister Hatune of the Syrian-Orthodox monastery in Warburg, Germany. She makes an amazing effort to help and protect the ruthlessly persecuted Christians in Iraq.
In recent years a horrifying number of kidnappings, rapes and mutilations of Iraqi Christian girls has been perpetrated by Muslim gangs. Some 700,000 Christians are fleeing this terror, but often find themselves exposed to similar dangers when they arrive in neighboring Muslim countries. With no rights and no help from authorities, they are surely in the most desperate of situations.
Please take the time to contemplate why this is not being reported more often.
And visit Sister Hatune’s foundation for more information about her great work.
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Rome, Italy, Feb 22, 2010 / 02:48 pm (CNA).- After the recent murder of four Christians in the city of Mosul, Iraq, the Chaldean Patriarchal Vicar of Baghdad, Bishop Shelmon Warduni issued a dramatic call to halt the massacre of Christians in the country. “Help us continue to not only bear witness to the Gospel as we have done for centuries, but also to continue being what we are: Iraqis!” he exclaimed.
Speaking to the site "Baghdadhope," Bishop Warduni said, “The Iraqi Christian community must not die...We, Christians, are innocent victims. We never hurt anybody, we just want to live in peace in our country. If someone doesn't want us here, if someone wants to uproot us from our land, tell us, otherwise leave us in peace.”
The bishop said he prays God will open the minds and hearts of those who commit such crimes against “goodness and truth.” He then denounced the government for “not doing anything to stop this massacre.”
After calling on the international community for help, Bishop Warduni addressed Iraqis living in the United States urging them “to write to your representatives in Congress,” reporting “our requests for help.”
Massacre shatters Christians in Iraq
It was the worst massacre of Iraqi Christians since the war began here in 2003.
By ANTHONY SHADID
The New York Times
BAGHDAD — Blood still smeared the walls of Our Lady of Salvation Church on Monday. Scraps of flesh remained between the pews. It was the worst massacre of Iraqi Christians since the war began here in 2003. But for survivors, the tragedy went deeper than the toll of the human wreckage: A fusillade of grenades, bullets and suicide vests had unraveled yet another thread of the country's once eclectic fabric.
"We've lost part of our soul now," said Rudy Khalid, a 16-year-old Christian who lived across the street. He shook his head.
"Our destiny," Khalid said, "no one knows what to say of it."
The massacre, in which 58 people were killed by an affiliate of al-Qaida, paled before the worst spectacles of violence in Iraq. Since the U.S. invasion, tens of thousands have died here — Sunni and Shiite Muslims — and few of the deaths generated the outrage expressed Monday.
Iraq was once a remarkable mélange of beliefs, customs and traditions; the killings Sunday drew another border in a nation defined more by war, occupation and deprivation. Identities have hardened; diversity has faded.
Nearly all of Iraq's Jews left long ago, many harassed by a xenophobic government. Iraq's Christians have dwindled; once numbering anywhere between 800,000 and 1.4 million, at least half are thought to have emigrated since 2003, their leaders say.
"They came to kill Iraq, not Iraqis," said Bassam Sami, who huddled in a room for four hours before security forces managed to free him. "They came to kill the spirit of Iraq. They came to kill the reason to live, every dream that you want to make true."
On the morning after security forces stormed the Syrian Catholic Church, freeing hostages but leaving far more dead and wounded behind, official accounts contradicted one another's and prompted suggestions they might have inadvertently worsened the carnage. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said security forces made the decision to storm the church after believing the assailants had begun killing the hostages. Had they not, he said, the toll would have been even worse.
But one official said that 23 of the hostages were killed when two of the gunmen detonated suicide vests as security forces stormed the church. Another confirmed that account but said that many hostages were killed soon after the gunmen, thought to number between six and 15, seized the building.
Before the gunmen entered, Rafael Qutaimi, a priest, had managed to herd many of the other survivors into a backroom, where they barricaded themselves behind two bookshelves.
"Peace be upon you, Mary," some prayed. "God in heaven, help us," others muttered. In time, the gunmen learned they were there. Unable to break in, they hurled four grenades inside through a window, killing four and wounding many more, survivors said.
Sami was lucky. He escaped from the backroom without any visible wounds. But Monday, he listed his friends who had died the day before. Raghda, John, Rita, the Rev. Wassim, Fadi, George, Nabil and Abu Saba.
A long list," he said simply. He shook his head, growing angry. Several survivors said that many of the casualties occurred when the gunmen entered and began firing randomly — at people, church icons and even windows. They described a ferocity on the part of the gunmen, some of them speaking in dialects from other Arab countries, as though the very sight of the church's interior had enraged them.
"They seemed insane," said Ban Abdullah, a 50-year-old survivor.
Police stood guard at the church, its doors barricaded with barbed wire and its walls lined with roses, orange trees and a plant Iraqis call "the ears of an elephant." One of them discouraged anyone from entering the shattered doors, under a portico that celebrated the glory of God "on the land of peace."
"Blood, flesh and bones," he described the scene. "You can't bear the smell."
Knots of survivors, as well as their friends and relatives, stood in the street amid bullet casings and bandage wrappers, some of them crying. Meyassr al-Qasboutros, a priest, was among them. His cousin, Wassim Sabih, was one of the two priests killed. Survivors said Sabih was pushed to the ground as he grasped a crucifix and pleaded with the gunmen to spare the worshippers.
He was then killed, his body riddled with bullets.
"We must die here," al-Qasboutros said defiantly. "We can't leave this country."
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NAJRAN, Saudi Arabia , A.D. 523
Among the ruins on the edge of this ancient oasis city are deep trenches littered with bones. That, local people say, is all that remains of one of the great atrocities of antiquity, when thousands of Christians were herded into pits here and burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith.
Times Topic: Saudi Arabia
Hassan Hatrash for The New York Times
Residents of Najran say that the ruins on the edge of their city include deep trenches littered with the bones of thousands of Christians who were burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith. It is impossible to know whether the periphery bone fragments are related to the massacre or not.
The massacre, which took place in about A.D. 523, is partly shadowed by myth and largely unknown to the outside world. But it has become central to the identity of the people now living here, who mostly belong to the minority Ismaili sect of Islam. The Ismailis, widely reviled as heretics by Sunni Muslims both here and abroad, see the oppressed Christians of ancient Najran as their literal and figurative ancestors in a continuing struggle for recognition by the Saudi state.
“This story means so much to us,” said Ali al-Hattab, a 31-year-old hospital worker and graduate student. “Our life and our struggle today comes from those martyrs who gave their lives for their beliefs.”
The Saudi government does not take kindly to this analogy. Part of the site where the Christians are said to have been killed — including charred remnants from the fires — was buried and paved over years ago. In a small museum next to the ruins that is dedicated to the city’s ancient history, there is only one brief reference to the massacre. In part, this is a reflection of the deep hostility among Saudi conservatives toward any artifacts that predate the birth of Islam in the seventh century.
Najran, a fertile valley on Saudi Arabia’s southern border with Yemen, was the last territory to be conquered by King Abdulaziz al-Saud, the country’s founder. He promised to respect the faith and customs of Najran — which had been an independent sheikdom — after bringing it into the kingdom in 1933. But Ismailis say his successors failed to follow through, denying them government jobs and pressuring them to convert to Wahhabism, the hard-line school of Sunni Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia.
A drive down Najran’s main street conveys some of this: it is lined with government-built Sunni mosques, even though Ismailis are the majority of the town’s 500,000 people (the Saudi census does not include sects, so it is impossible to know the true proportions).
The government has naturalized Sunnis from Yemen in an effort to alter the sectarian balance, Mr. Hattab and many other Ismailis say. Saudi officials have often publicly maligned Ismailis as infidels. The Shiites of eastern Saudi Arabia have long faced similar discrimination, but because they are more numerous, their situation is better known.
Ten years ago, these tensions erupted into violence. A demonstration outside the governor’s residence in April 2000 led to a gun battle in which two Ismaili men were killed and, according to some government accounts, one police officer. Hundreds of Ismaili men were arrested over the following weeks, and more than 90 were tried in secret; some say they were tortured, according to a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch.
Many Ismailis say the situation has improved since last year, when King Abdullah appointed his son Mishal bin-Abdullah governor of the province. Public attacks on the Ismaili faith have ceased, and the state has made significant investments in the city, building a large new university, renovating the airport and improving the roads.
But most Ismailis seem anxious about their status and unsure if King Abdullah, who is 86 years old, can continue to protect them from discrimination by the hard-liners who wield a powerful influence in the Saudi government and clerical establishment. Few Ismailis are willing to talk openly about the issue.
Those who do so have sometimes been punished. In 2006, at one of the “National Dialogue” sessions convened by King Abdullah to encourage debate and tolerance, a Najrani woman named Fatima al-Tisan bravely spoke up about the way Ismailis feel disenfranchised. Soon afterward, she was fired from her government job at the Education Ministry in Najran.
The story of the Christians’ massacre — known here as “al ukhdood,” or the trenches — remains a powerful metaphor for most Ismailis, and it comes up constantly in conversation here.
