ICC Note: The American Center for Law and Justice is preparing to start a petition for the protection of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, demanding that American leaders take action on this “problem from Hell.” They lay out the obligation to protect these victims as the ancient Church community that can trace its lineage back to the apostle Thomas.

08/19/2016 Iraq (Christian Post): The American Center for Law and Justice has said that it is preparing a series of critical legal actions to address the “problem from Hell” in the face of the ongoing Christian genocide at the hands of the Islamic State terror group, including letters to every U.S. presidential candidate laying out their obligations to protect victims.

The ACLJ, whose petition to protect Christians and other minorities has been signed by over 174,000 people, said that the truth lies in the statistics — there were 1.4 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, but now that number has dropped by 82 percent, down to a population of 250,000 or less.

The numbers are just as harrowing in Syria, where two-thirds of the 2 million or so Christian population has been left displaced or slaughtered because of Islamic extremism and the ongoing civil war.

“Despite the fact that Christian communities of Iraq and Syria are ancient ones with ties to the earliest Church, and while some of these Christians still pray in the Aramaic language of Jesus of Nazareth and trace their religion to Thomas (one of the 12 apostles), they now face a situation that Pope Frances calls an ‘ecumenism of blood,'” the law group wrote.

The U.S. government offered a response back in March when Secretary of State John Kerry finally recognized the ongoing slaughter of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria as a genocide, but the ACLJ says that much more needs to be done to protect vulnerable populations.

“The slaughter continues,” the conservative group said, noting that in several cities in Syria, Christians are on the edge of extinction.

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