Syria: "A fatal disappearance of Christians"?
Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan.
On January 28, 2016, Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan, patriarch of the Syrian Catholic Church, declared in Rome to Aide à l'Eglise en Détresse (AED): "Our nightmare, our greatest fear, is that what happened in Turkey will happen in Iraq and Syria: that there will hardly even remain a Christian presence;" and he denounced "the indifference" of the West that places geopolitical interests above the fate of the Christians in the Middle East. In Syria, the number of Christians has spectacularly diminished. "In the 50's, we were about 19% of the population and now we are hardly 5%. Many have already left the country and many others will continue to leave, risking death at sea." Originally from Hasakah, in the north-east of Syria, Patriarch Younan denounced the drama of the many Syrians who are dying of hunger and from lack of medical care. "Civilians pay the heaviest tax on the conflict."
During the 8th night of the Witnesses at Notre Dame de Paris, on January 29, 2016, Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart sadly declared: "If I were to tell of all that has happened in the last five years in this unhappy Syria, the list would be long. We can speak of a systematic eradication of an entire civilization, an entire patrimony. We can also consider a plan of premeditated systematic destruction, that seeks to eliminate all that constitutes the wealth of this country. It is a great catastrophe that strikes us pitilessly. We find ourselves confronted with great perils, perhaps even a fatal disappearance." Born in Aleppo to a family of 12 children, 72-year-old Archbishop Jeanbart has been archbishop of his hometown for 20 years, and he denounces "an invasion of refugees in Europe": "I feel as if there were an organized deportation of our population," that thus deprives Syria of a "productive population". It is a very rich country. Aleppo is 8,000 years old and has seen worse. It is an industrial city, a city where people like to work. Before the war, Aleppo offered work to 1.2 workers in factories," he explained on BFM.tv. "Because of the terrorism, there was this incredible invasion of refugees in Europe, then recently of hundreds and thousands to Canada. This places us in a situation of fear, and of fear that the country will be emptied."
Marc Fromager, director of the AED, when questioned by Le Point at the 8th night of the Witnesses, explained frankly: "On the Syrian case, France has an obvious responsibility since we charged Bachar el-Assad from the start, siding with the rebellion. In doing so, we actively participated in the destruction of the country. In reality, not only did we do nothing for the Christian in the East, but we contributed to the conditions of their disappearance. The arms we delivered to the supposedly moderate rebels ended up in the hands of the extremist groups, in particular the Islamic State that is now using French arms. All the information diffused on Syria in France comes from one single source, the OSDH (Office syrien pour les droits de l'homme - Syrian Office for Human Rights), an NGO based in London and supported by the Qatar." And quoting Archbishop Jeanbart, Marc Fromager denounced "the European Bishops' Conferences that did not listen enough to their oriental peers, and chose to submit to the politically correct when they should have been politically just."
(sources: apic/acs/aed/aleteia/lepoint – DICI no.330 Feb. 12, 2016)
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