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Syrian Christian leaders call on U.S. to end support for anti-Assad

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  • Syrian Christian leaders call on U.S. to end support for anti-Assad

    Syrian Christian leaders call on U.S. to end support for anti-Assad rebels

    15:54 01.02.2014


    The Swampland.time.com presents the stories told by five top Syrian
    Christian leaders about the horrors their churches are experiencing at
    the hands of Islamist extremists, which are biblical in their
    brutality. Excerpts of the Article are presented below:

    Bishop Elias Toumeh, representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of
    Antioch and All the East, tells of the funeral he led ten days ago for
    the headless body of one of his parishioners in Marmarita. Rev. Adeeb
    Awad, vice moderator of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and
    Lebanon, explains how the rebels blew up his church and then pointed
    the finger at the regime.

    Bishop Armash Nalbandian, primate of the Armenian Church of Damascus,
    says he received word on Facebook from a fellow bishop in Aleppo that
    two congregants were traveling when opposition fighters stopped their
    bus, made them present their Armenian IDs, and then took them away.
    The fighters, Nalbandian recounts, returned to the fellow passengers a
    few hours later with a box, which they said were cakes. Inside were
    the two Armenian heads.

    The bishops' stories are difficult to independently verify, and the
    war's death toll goes far beyond just Christian communities in
    Syria-more than 130,000 people have been killed since the fighting
    began, and at least two million others have fled the country. But they
    are emerging as part of a concerted push by Syrian Christians to get
    the U.S. to stop its support for rebel groups fighting Syrian
    president Bashar al Assad. "The US must change its politics and must
    choose the way of diplomacy and dialogue, not supporting rebels and
    calling them freedom fighters," says Nalbandian.

    The group is the first delegation of its kind to visit Washington
    since the crisis began three years ago, and its five members represent
    key different Christian communities in the country. Awad, Toumeh, and
    Nalbandian were joined by Rev. Riad Jarjour, Presbyterian pastor from
    Homs, and Bishop Dionysius Jean Kawak, Metropolitan of the Syrian
    Orthodox Church. The Westminster Institute and Barnabas Aid, two
    groups that focus on religious freedom and relief for threatened faith
    communities, sponsored their trip.

    Given the United States' increased support for non-terrorist rebel
    groups in the wake of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons, the
    religious leaders' mission is a long shot. The bishops are asking the
    United States to exert pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
    and Turkey to stop supporting and sending terrorist fighters to Syria.
    "The real problem is that the strong military opposition on the ground
    is a foreign opposition," Awad explains, arguing that US support of
    opposition groups means support for foreign terrorist fighters. "They
    are the ones killing and attacking churches and clergy and nuns and
    burning houses and eating human livers and hearts and cutting heads,"
    Awad says.

    The Syrian Christian churches are not publicly calling for outright
    support of the Assad regime. Doing so would further endanger their
    followers and hurt the moral component of their case, given the
    regime's alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. Instead,
    they're meeting privately with law makers, diplomats and think tanks.

    The bishops' stories are similar to other grim instances of violence
    against Christians during the war. Christian schools in Damascus were
    shelled in November. The next month, a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns were
    taken from Mar Takla Monastery in Maaloula. Rebel groups abducted two
    bishops near Aleppo last April. Jesuit priestPaolo Dall'Oglio, whom
    TIME wrote about in 2012 when he visited the United States on a
    similar lobbying trip, has been missing and feared dead since July.

    http://www.armradio.am/en/2014/02/01/syrian-christian-leaders-call-on-u-s-to-end-support-for-anti-assad-rebels/

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