Helpless Situations: U.S. State Department Denies Visas for Persecuted Assyrian Christians

(Washington, DC)—The U.S. State Department may have sent a signal to an Anglican bishop in Iraq that despite persecution and harassment from the terror group known as ISIS, Christians in that country will not find any support from the United States government.

According to Faith J.H. McDonnell of Philos Project, the Rt. Rev. Julian M. Dobbs, bishop of the Diocese of CANA East (Convocation of Anglicans in North America), revealed that part of U.S. foreign policy during an interaction with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). Dobbs made his case to the State Department on behalf of a group of Assyrian Christians who are desperate to leave northern Iraq.

“There is no way that Christians will be supported because of their religious affiliation,” the State Department said.

McDonnell reported that the Assyrian Christians received both the permission and blessing from their own bishop to leave Iraq. Until recently, church leaders in the region have urged Christians to stay in the Middle East; now they have concluded that their chances of survival are much better if they left.

“Christianity in Iraq is going through one of its worst and hardest stages of its long history, which dates back to the first century,” Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil said. “Throughout all these long centuries, we have experienced many hardships and persecutions, offering caravans of martyrs. Yet 2014 brought the worst acts of genocide against us in our history.”

Warda added that “Christianity as a religion and as a culture from Mesopotamia [ancient Iraq]” now faced “extinction” due to the ongoing threat posed by ISIS.

McDonnell elaborated on the plight of Christians and other minorities in the region since ISIS took over the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014.

“Christians, Yazidis, Mandeans and others were targeted for destruction, and within just the first week of ISIS’ occupation, more than 500,000 people fled the city,” McDonnell wrote. “The homes of Christians were marked with the Arabic letter ‘nun,’ standing for Nazarene. Christians were threatened with death if they did not convert to Islam, pay jizya and live as a subjected people—’dhimmi’—or flee immediately.”

Interested in the whole story? Click here shariaunveiled.wordpress.com/