The real refugee crisis

From Canon Andrew White. Read it all here:

In a scathing statement, Canon White has now slammed Europe for its response to the migrant crisis. He says it is wrong to focus resources on those already in Europe, when those in real need are the ones left behind.

“I am disappointed by Europe’s response to the refugee crisis,” he said “Not enough is being done to help the most vulnerable, particularly those who have fled religious persecution.

“My charity is providing food, shelter and medicine for hundreds of Iraqi refugee families who have fled ISIS and are now in Jordan. Some have walked across the desert to find safety, with little more than the clothes on their backs.

“When I see angry young men clashing with border police in Hungary and demanding to be let into other EU countries, I feel that the wrong people are at the front of the queue.

“Europe needs to distinguish between those who are looking for a better life and those who are running for their lives, otherwise we risk failing those who need our help the most.

“I would like to see more being done for the thousands of refugees, particularly Iraqi refugees, who are stranded in Jordan and other countries without any hope for the future.”

[…..]

“I can confirm that it is not just displaced people who are fleeing,” he said. “Priests tell me that there are also people who aren’t too badly off financially, people who work at banks for example, who are leaving. People who don’t really need to leave. They feel that a window of opportunity has opened up and they fear this window will soon close so they take advantage of it. Meanwhile, those who are poorer aren’t even considering leaving. Everyone is losing out. Those who are most able are leaving and they are the only ones who could rebuild all that has been destroyed in recent years.”

[….]

“If you resist the easy option taken by the chattering classes who claim the moral high ground by insisting on open borders, you can see that European policy is the result of moral confusion,” he wrote.

“Let’s take the ‘duty of rescue’, which is official Europe’s rationale for fishing people out of the sea. People have a right to dream of a life in Europe, but Europe has a moral obligation to rescue, not to make dreams come true.

“What does rescue imply and to whom does it apply? Just being poor does not make someone eligible for being ‘rescued’ by a life in Europe. Mass poverty has to be tackled, but the only way it can be done is for poor countries to catch up with the rich ones. There are ways in which we can help that process, but encouraging the mass emigration of their most enterprising young people is not one of them.”

We have the same problem in Canada. Rather than vigorously attacking the problem – ISIS – we react to the undeniably sad photo of a dead toddler with a predictable, sticky sentimentality that does more to stimulate our feelings of self-righteousness than aid those who actually deserve our help – persecuted Christians. Churches are, of course, among the worst offenders.

If you would like to donate money to help the real refugees, here is one place to do that.

Canon Andrew White in Burlington

Canon Andrew White was at St. George’s, ANiC, this evening to baptise his grandson.

Bishop Charlie Masters was there:

_29U5130Along with Andrew White:
_29U5139 _29U5146 _29U5148 _29U5149-2 _29U5151 _29U5154 _29U5155Canon Andrew spoke about the situation in Iraq which has gone, he said, from very bad to very, very bad. He takes courage from the Christian children. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, ISIS demanded that a group of children convert to Islam and follow Mohammed. They all held hands and said: “no, we love Jesus”. One by one, they were shot in the head.

The Canon asks us to pray and pay. We can pray anywhere and pay here.

Canon Andrew White leaves Iraq

A report from the National Post tells us than Canon White has “has quit Iraq after death threats and the beheading of children attached to his church by Islamic terrorists.” Although Andrew White is travelling in the US at the moment, his Facebook page doesn’t mention anything about quitting – suggesting a permanent departure – Iraq.

Nevertheless, the article is interesting in that it has Andrew White placing blame for the present mayhem not on the initial invasion – something he supported – but on Obama’s premature withdrawal of troops:

Asked whether ISIS could be reasoned with, Canon White said, “No.” He added, “ISIS is driven by that passion that Iraq has gone very, very wrong. Among terrorists, often they have lost something big. And the Sunnis have lost ultimately their power, their responsibility and their significance. Under the Saddam Hussein regime they had essence; now they have nothing.

“We can kill a few ISIS people from the clouds; we can kill some of our innocent civilians; but we can’t really bring about change” until the ground troops enter the fray. “American ground troops,” he said.

Canon White said U.S. President Barack Obama made the mistake of pulling out of Iraq before the country could guarantee the safety of the people.

“ISIS are going around causing their chaos with American weapons, in American tanks, in American armored vehicles and their Humvees because that man Obama left us. And we are seeing our people killed because of that mistake,” he said.

In a Facebook post from October 16th Andrew White also reiterates that Saddam had chemical weapons; now ISIS has and is using them:

Chemical Weapons Did Exist
For years I had been saying that Chemical Weapons did exist. Even before the war in 2003 I was saying that Saddam had the weapons and was removing them to Syria. Now ISIS have done what the coalition could never do. They have found the weapons but they are using them. The battle has just begun, but there is know body fighting the evil. What do we do. Praying is half the battle but we have to keep the people of G-d strong and able to keep eating and coping and surviving with G-d’s help we can.

Vicar of Baghdad calls for prayer, money and military action in Iraq

Even though military action is “a terrible thing to wish”, he wishes it.

Canon Andrew White writes:

I have just returned from a secret visit to Qaraqosh – once the largest Christian town in Iraq, but no longer.

Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town’s 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.

The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches.

My visit, under the noses of the gunmen, was frightening – but that is nothing to the terror of the poor souls left behind.

Since I went to St George’s Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003 – the only Anglican church in the city – I have seen countless terrible things. Many of my congregation have been killed or mutilated in the years of violence.

But I have never witnessed anything on the scale, or which has affected me quite so dreadfully as on this visit to the north of Iraq

In the nearby city of Irbil, I found many of those Christians who had fled. Some 30,000 refugees are packed into the Kurdish capital, forming a new Christian suburb.

I spoke to one woman who had survived the massacres in Qaraqosh. She had a bandaged left hand. When IS soldiers could not remove her gold wedding ring, they had simply hacked off her finger. She wept as she told me.

The refugees are now penniless, robbed of their homes and possessions. Christian houses were daubed with the letter ‘N’ for Nazere and given to Muslim families.

I met Hana, who used to be the caretaker of my church in Baghdad, and fought to stay dry-eyed as he told me the fate of his youngest son, aged five. The boy was chopped in half in front of Hana’s eyes during an IS attack.

[…..]

Where is their protection? It is a terrible thing to wish, but I now believe that military action of some sort is necessary, if only to reduce the movement of IS tanks, their soldiers, and their power and authority on the ground.

Even this is not the solution in the long run. We need money, and we need prayer. Without those we have nothing.

Those wanting to donate can do so at the website of the Foundation For Relief And Reconciliation In The Middle East: frrme.org

Andrew White was in favour of the US’s removal of Saddam Hussein even after the persecution of Christians had begun. It is to the West’s shame that what was begun in Iraq was not completed and that it has taken the horrors mentioned above to stir us into action again; I fear we will still lack the resolve to see it through to the end.

Vicar of Baghdad: “Child I baptised cut in half by ISIS”

Demonic evil at work.

From here:

The five-year-old son of a founding member of Baghdad’s Anglican church was cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State1 on the Christian town of Qaraqosh.

In an interview today, an emotional Canon Andrew White told ACNS that he christened the boy several years ago, and that the child’s parents had named the lad Andrew after him.

“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptised his child in my church in Baghdad2. This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew.”

Canon Andrew White interviewed by the BBC:

To donate go to Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East.