ICC Note: Speaking of the impact of the war in Syria on the Christian community, Patriarch Gregory Laham III said more than 1,000 Christians have been killed and another 450,000 are among the nine million displaced Syrians. There have been some 85 churches who have been destroyed, burned, or otherwise desecrated. The presence of militant Islamic extremists, with a stated goal and demonstrated practice implementing a strict interpretation of Islamic rule, has been the primary source of attacks against the Christian community.
12/20/2013 Syria (Xinhuanet) – Syria’s long-term crisis has displaced more than 450,000 Christian Syrians and killed more than a thousand of them, Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of the Church of Antioch and all East, told Xinhua in an interview on Thursday.
“As we know, there are 120,000 Syrians killed in the 3-year- long crisis, including Syrian Christians. Maybe the Christians among the killed amount to 1,000. There are also nine million people displaced inside and outside Syria, 450,000 of whom were Christians,” Laham said.
The Patriarch’s remarks came as the Syrian crisis is coming to its third year and the sectarian theme of the crisis could no longer hide itself with the strong presence of fighters from al- Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in several Syrian areas.
Syria’s Christians, who take up about 10 percent in the country ‘s Sunni-majority population, have felt the pain of the protracted crisis, as their population has been subject to attacks by the radical rebels. The latest incident took place earlier this month, when radical jihadists fully controlled Syria’s Christian town of Maaloula, north of the capital Damascus.
The armed radicals have fully controlled the town and started burning houses, the mainstream media said, adding that the rebels have also kidnapped 12 nuns from Mar Thecla Monastery, the largest monastery in that key historic area, which is one of the oldest cradles of Christianity in Syria.
Aside from the Christians, Syrians from the Druze and Alawite minorities, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, have also been subject to harsher treatment by the jihadi groups, whose leaders contended that they are protecting the majority Sunni population from the crackdown of the Syrian administration, whose top ranks belong to the Alawite minority.
In the interview, Laham said “there are 85 churches that have been destroyed, sabotaged, burnt and subject to systematic desecration by the Takfiri groups.”
“The crisis has tragically targeted all the Syrians with all of their sects,” he said.
Regarding the kidnapped nuns of Maloula and the two bishops, who have been kidnapped since eight months ago in northern Aleppo province, the top Patriarch said there was no news about them or the time of their release.
“Targeting high-profile Christian figures is aimed to disseminate fear among the Christians and push people to leave the country,” he remarked.
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