ICC Note: In this new report, Swedish-Assyrian journalist Nuri Kino interviews nearly one hundred Christian Syrian refugees, giving a voice to this otherwise silent minority. “The war in Syria is growing increasingly worse every day, and it is affecting every Syrian citizen, regardless of ethnicity or religion,” the Assyrian International News Agency reports. “But the situation for minorities is even more horrifying. The Christian minority in Syria has no militia and is targeted by everyone. Christian Assyrians and others have become the number one target for criminals and terrorists.”
By Tuma Abraham
2/08/2013 Syria (AINA) – Nuri Kino, award winning Swedish-Assyrian author and investigative journalist, has met and interviewed nearly one hundred Christian Syrian refugees. In his personal report he gives voice to this otherwise silent minority. He is told harrowing tales of systematic rape and kidnappings. Many, perhaps most of the refugees interviewed express a desire to leave the Middle East for good and have contacted human smugglers. A multi-million enterprise has sprung up around the refugee crisis. Kino has also spoken to several of these smugglers and investigated the trade. His first-hand report includes an interview with a young man who reached Sweden after a hellish journey from Syria. “Jacob” was forced into a sealed container and almost died of suffocation. Only a few days after leaving the container he and some seventy other men were forced onto a ship, where only half of them survived the journey.
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The war in Syria is growing increasingly worse every day, and it is affecting every Syrian citizen, regardless of ethnicity or religion. But the situation for minorites is even more horrifying. The Christian minority in Syria has no militia and is targeted by everyone. Christian Assyrians (also called Chaldeans and Syriacs) and others have become the number one target for criminals and terrorists. Between The Barbed Wire gives a voice to this people and is a must-read for anyone who is involved or interested in issues of migration and international politics.
The personal report compares the exodus of the Christians from Syria with that from Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The current similarities with the situation in Iraq are alarming. At the peak of the sectarian conflict in Iraq, Christian were killed, some beheaded in front of video cameras by extremists and driven from their homes and businesses, targeted by religious intolerance and the prospect of economic gain. Meanwhile more than half of the Iraqi Christians have been forced to leave the country.
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