Christian Syrians In the U.S. Fear For Their Families Back Home

posted on: Sep 30, 2015

Angela’s talks with her family in Syria are brief.
“Anytime there is a bomb there or something we always call and say, ‘Are you good? Is it far from where you are?’” she told BuzzFeed News. Living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Angela said she and her family can’t offer much more than moral support to her relatives still in Syria, like answering her uncle’s calls during the brief periods he has electricity.
As thousands of refugees of all religions flee the country — now in its fourth year of an intractable war between government, rebel, and ISIS forces — to make the grueling and dangerous journey to Europe, Angela’s extended family opted instead to stay in their homeland and apply for visas. (Angela’s name and the names of her family members have been changed out of their fear for their relatives’ safety.)
The recent history of Syrian Christians — an umbrella term for the diverse minority group of Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, and others — has gone from being accepted under Bashar Al-Assad’s regime to becoming a persecuted class. Their plight has been an ongoing concern for human rights advocates since the beginning of the war in 2011. Since then, more than 700,000 Christian Syrians have left the country, according to Open Doors International, a U.K.-based organization tracking the persecution of Christians.
Angela’s family comes from a long line of Syrian Christians, who have become special targets for ISIS and other Islamist rebel groups because of their faith and a belief that all — instead of some — Christians support President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, said Princeton historian Christian Sahner and author of Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present. As a result, the world’s oldest Christian community along with its churches, books, and icons are slowly being erased.

Angela seated a table with her family after services at the Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral. Leticia Miranda for BuzzFeed News
Last winter, Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist group competing with ISIS for control of Syria, held a group of Greek Orthodox nuns — along with 150 other Syrian women and children — hostage for four months in Syria until it released them through a prisoner exchange facilitated by officials from Qatar and Lebanon. When ISIS took the city of Qariyatain, in Homs Province, last August, it demolished the Syrian Catholic Saint Elian Monastery and kidnapped 250 Syrians from the town who still remain missing.
Angela’s immediate family — her two brothers and mother — arrived in the U.S. in 1998 hoping for more economic opportunity and a chance to study at American colleges. The family quickly adjusted to life in Brooklyn. They continued their family business in jewelry and began attending services at Downtown Brooklyn’s Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, where Angela met her husband and started a family of her own.
Angela and her family in the U.S. said they can only watch as their relatives, who once enjoyed prosperity, now live in constant fear of their lives. Her mother said she read on Facebook that the priest of her hometown church in Hama, Father Rafael, was beheaded by ISIS when they took the city last April. Another friend’s Facebook post said that a Christian friend of the family was beheaded in Idlib because he owned a liquor store. Angela’s childhood church in Idlib, St. Mary’s Orthodox Church, was taken over and destroyed by the al-Nusra Front. Three homes in their predominantly Christian neighborhood in Idlib have been bombed, leaving one man killed in his sleep, she said.

Sunday services at Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral. Leticia Miranda for BuzzFeed News
Angela’s uncle, who is an engineer and building inspector in Syria, told her that a jihadist group learned he was Christian and attempted to kidnap him last year. He was inspecting a building just outside of Damascus when a group of co-workers ran to him yelling, “They’re coming! They’re coming!” — though they were unsure who they were affiliated with. The co-workers rushed him to a home nearby to hide for the rest of the day and returned him home to Damascus when it was safe. The next day, the group of men who helped him went missing and still have not been found. Angela’s uncle now refuses to leave the city out of fear for his life.
“When we know they’re leaving before they leave, we talk to them and talk to them once they get there,” said Angela. “We always worry.”
Most of Angela’s family, like thousands of other Christians, fled Idlib about three months ago to join her uncle in Damascus. They are essentially hostage there. Before the war, the trek would take a few hours by car. Now the trip takes two days because the family must follow longer roads and change cabs to throw off potential kidnappers.
The possibility that her entire extended family can escape the country seems bleak. Instead, they have dedicated themselves to finding safety for her 23-year-old cousin. The family recently made a two-day journey to Lebanon for a visa, and the cousin was later approved for one to Germany. The rest of her family remains in Syria.

Source: www.buzzfeed.com