The grim situation facing Christians in Iraq has been confirmed in a video released on the Orthodox Christian Network by Canon Andrew White - the Vicar of Baghdad.
Canon White – who was ordered to leave Iraq for his own safety by the Archbishop of Canterbury – speaks movingly of the plight of Christians there. Around 250,000 have been displaced by Islamic State in the north of the country - all that remained from the 1,500,000-strong Christian population.
He said:
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Things were bad in Baghdad, there were bombs and shootings and our people were being killed, so many of our people fled back to Nineveh, their traditional home. It was safer, but then one day, ISIS – Islamic State. They came in and they hounded all of them out. They killed huge numbers, they chopped their children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and it was so terrible what happened.
Islamic State forced Christians to convert to Islam on pain of death – Canon White added.
He told of the fate of a group of Christian young people:
Islamic State turned up and said to the children, you say the words that you will follow Mohammed. The children, all under 15, four of them, said no, we love Yesua, we have always loved Yesua, we have always followed Yesua, Yesua has always been with us. They said, 'Say the words.' They said, 'No, we can't.' They chopped all their heads off. How do you respond to that? You just cry.
Meanwhile US Secretary of State – John Kerry – was depressingly telling a meeting of the US led coalition that the limited military action being undertaken against Islamic State could see the Coalition's commitment being:
measured most likely in years …
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Kerry however left no doubt on the Coalition's mission:
Our coalition does not summon hate, but rather the courage to build a future that is based on shared interests, shared values, and a shared faith in one another. That contrast in goals marks the dividing line between barbarism and civilization, and it explains both why we dare not fail and why we will succeed.
The dividing lines have been drawn - demanding that every member state of the United Nations declares on which side it stands and what it will contribute towards eliminating Islamic State.
The international community needs to shed its present indifference and unanimously take up the call of the Pope and Bartholomew to put an end to the horrors represented by the Islamic State and those who are flocking to fight under its flag.
Time to end this reprehensible international indifference - and time to stop crying.
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