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TO FOREIGN, NATIONAL, AND RELIGION EDITORS:
CSI asks President Obama for Easter Ceasefire in Syria
WASHINGTON, April 18, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This Good
Friday, Dr. John Eibner, the CEO of Christian Solidarity International
(CSI-USA), urged President Obama to "insist" that the "Islamist allies
of the United States," Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, "order their
proxy military forces in Syria to observe a permanent cease-fire
beginning this Easter Sunday, and enter into serious peace talks with
their political opponents."
Eibner also asked President Obama to raise Pope Francis I's openly
expressed concern about religious persecution in Syria and the broader
Muslim-majority Middle East with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Emir
Tamim bin Hamad al Thani of Qatar and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan of Turkey.
Quoting from a communication he received this week from a Christian
social worker trapped in the rebel-besieged city of Aleppo, Eibner
informed President Obama about the grim conditions there:
"We are in a state of siege. The rebels are trying to enter the safe
zone and are hitting us with rockets. There are explosions all over
the city. The road towards the outside of the city is closed. The
prices of food started jumping higher and nothing is entering the
city. The situation has been getting worse for over two weeks: No
telephone, no electricity, etc. Today, I have Internet access for the
first time in many days. Despite the rockets more than 350 people were
in church on Palm Sunday. But we are not sure if we will be able to
worship in church on Good Friday or on Easter. May the Lord's will be
done."
Eibner protested the President's policy of using "radical,
anti-Christian Islamist proxies" to achieve his declared goal of
overthrowing the Assad regime, Russia's sole remaining ally in the
Middle East. This regime change policy, he said, is resulting in "the
transformation - through religious cleansing - of multi-religious,
multi-cultural Syria into a religiously intolerant Sunni Islamist
country."
Eibner also informed President Obama of two additional recent cases of
religious cleansing by rebel forces in Syria. While undertaking a CSI
humanitarian aid action in Iraq earlier this month, Eibner assisted
Assyrian Christian refugees from Syria. Their ancestors found refuge
in Syria after first fleeing the Genocide of Christians in Turkey in
1915-1918, and then the Simele Massacres of Christians in Iraq in
1933. They have now fled back to Iraq to escape jihadi rebels in
Syria, who forced them to choose between "converting to Islam, paying
protection money, being killed, or leaving their homes within 48
hours." Eibner also drew Obama's attention to the March 21 expulsion
of Armenian Christians from the village of Kassab, near the Turkish
border. They were attacked by jihadi rebels with backing from the
United States' NATO ally Turkey.
"There is good reason," Eibner wrote, "to believe that the current
siege of hitherto 'safe' zones in Aleppo and the recent religious
cleansing of Armenian Christians from Kassab is a result of an
intensification of U.S. covert operations" in support of rebel groups
in Syria, an intensification the Washington Post revealed on March 27,
citing anonymous "knowledgeable officials." Eibner reminded the
President that "the United States used the same dangerous networks of
Sunni extremists, among them Al Qaeda and the Taliban, to fight the
Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s - a policy that ultimately
resulted in heightened global threats of jihadi terror, including the
9/11 attacks against the United States."
Eibner concluded with an appeal to President Obama to inform the
American people exactly how many additional deaths, displacements, and
cases of violent religious persecution, he will regard as acceptable
collateral damage in the pursuit of regime change in Syria.
Christian Solidarity International is a Christian human rights group
advocating for and bringing aid to displaced and threatened Christians
in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria. It has issued a
Genocide Warning for religious minorities in the Islamic Middle East.
Contact: Joel Veldkamp, 515-421-7258, joel@csi-usa.org
SOURCE Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
-0- 04/18/2014
/Web Site: http://www.csi-int.org
CO: Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
ST: District of Columbia
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