Syrian Christian Refugees Turned Away in Favor of Muslims

The humanitarian crisis caused by the Syrian conflict has led to a flood of refugees fleeing the violence of ISIS, but very few of those who have been granted asylum are among the most persecuted group in the region: Christians. 

Recently released US immigration numbers show that for the fiscal year 2016, a total of 10,801 refugees were accepted into the country but that only 56 are Christian. These fifty-six refugees represent only 0.52% of the total number of immigrants and a vanishingly small percentage of the total number of Christians who are in danger of outright genocide in the Syrian conflict.

The Syrian Christian population is roughly 10% and is comprised of Assyrians, Armenians, Arab Christians and Greek Christians in what has constitutionally been a religiously plural state with legally guaranteed protections for Christians. 

These protections have, of course, broken down in the civil war and the Christian population has shown greater support to the central government because it is widely believed that a victory by the Sunni ISIS, or another Muslim faction, will result in genocide of Syrian Christians. 

In fact, the systematic rape and killing of Christians and Yazidis already underway by ISIS has been declared a genocide and there are camps in Jordan ready to receive refugees of the conflict. So where are the Christians?

Thus far, those accepted as refugees by the United States identify as 29 Christian, 12 Catholic, 6 Orthodox, 4 Jehovah Witness, 4 Protestant and 1 Greek Orthodox. Though accounting is difficult in the chaos of civil war, experts estimate that since the start of the war in 2011, somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Christians have fled Syria while many have been murdered in Syria by the Islamic State in a systematic campaign of religious genocide. 

This declaration of genocide by the US State Department came only in March of 2016, five years after the mass killings began, but some now question the lukewarm response of the US to accepting Christian refugees.

It may seem strange that 98.2% of the refugees are Sunni Muslims, the very same sect as that the Islamic State claims to belong to, while they slaughter Shiite Muslims alongside Yazidis and Christians. The answer to this, many reports now indicate, lies in the refugee camps in Jordan and their bias towards Sunni Muslim refugees. 

The United Nations maintains a refugee camp in Jordan where those fleeing persecution by the Islamic State are able to make asylum applications and eventually emigrate to the United States. It is within these camps however that Christians and other religious minorities report extreme persecution, including murder and even being subject to kidnapping and sold into slavery. 

Nina Shea, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom has stated that "The Christians don't reside in those camps because it is too dangerous. They are preyed upon by other residents from the Sunni community and there is infiltration by ISIS and criminal gangs."

Even among Muslim numbers, only 20 Shiites have been admitted, a figure far lower than should be expected if there were a fair process of refugee processing. It is this number that betrays the reason why the great majority of refugees are not Christian because the entire staff of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) office in Jordan is Sunni Muslim. 

For those few brave enough to remain in the camps, their Christian names are recognized and immediately excluded from consideration, according to William Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition, who has extensive experience operating in Iraq and Jordan.

Facing genocide or brutal slavery both within the camps and without from Islamic State fanatics and criminal gangs, Christians have little reason to put their hope in a refugee system that is set up to reject them outright simply because of their religion. 

Christians need not apply, is the message from the Sunni Muslim staff in Jordan and the result is a vast and threatened population of Christians who have become urban refugees, hiding in basements and abandoned buildings as they fight to survive.

The crisis is not only about helping refugees, according to Shea, but ensuring the very existence of Christianity itself in a place where it has thrived as a community for 2,000 years. 

She described the genocide of Syrian Christians in dire terms as she addressed the State Department in an official lawsuit, "The Christian community is dying. I feat that there will be no Christians left when the dust settles."