[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 153 (Wednesday, October 30, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1615]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            ``ANTI-CHRISTIAN TERROR IS EVERYONE'S CONCERN''

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 30, 2013

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call my colleagues' attention 
to a recent op-ed written by Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish 
United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. ``Anti-Christian 
Terror is Everyone's Concern,'' (The Washington Post, October 24, 2013) 
is a call to end religious persecution, and I join Mr. Nasatir in his 
demand for that action.
  All of us who believe in the need for tolerance should be concerned 
about the attacks on Christian minorities around the world. Passage of 
H.R. 301, bipartisan legislation to create a Special Envoy to Promote 
Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South 
Central Asia, is one important step we can take.
  I want to thank Steve Nasatir for his leadership in the fight for 
religious and human rights and for this article, which reminds us that 
we each have a responsibility to speak out when we see persecution and 
work to end it.

              Anti-Christian Terror Is Everyone's Concern

       An Egyptian woman mourns during the funeral of several Copt 
     Christians who were killed in Warraq's Virgin Mary church in 
     Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Egypt's Christians were 
     stunned Monday by a drive-by shooting in which masked gunmen 
     sprayed a wedding party outside a Cairo church with automatic 
     weapons fire, killing several, including two young girls, in 
     an attack that raised fears of a nascent insurgency by 
     extremists after the military's ouster of the president and a 
     crackdown on Islamists.
       The persecution of any religious minority anywhere by 
     anyone is an evil injustice. It requires all persons of 
     conscience to speak out and, when possible, take action.
       The upcoming 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht makes this 
     an auspicious time to raise awareness about the contemporary 
     violence targeting religious minorities and their places of 
     worship. Of particular concern are attacks against Christian 
     minorities that have occurred with alarming frequency from 
     Syria to Egypt, from Iraq to Pakistan, and from Kenya to 
     Sudan.
       November 9 marks 75 years since the pogrom against Jews 
     committed by mobs throughout the Nazi Reich. Often called 
     Kristallnacht, or the ``Night of Broken Glass,'' when rioters 
     killed or injured hundreds of Jews; burned over 1,000 
     synagogues; destroyed 7,000 Jewish-owned shops and 
     businesses; vandalized cemeteries and schools, and; sent 
     30,000 Jews to German concentration camps. It marked a 
     turning point in the escalating campaign of persecution 
     culminating in the Holocaust.
       These events, seared into Jewish collective memory, make us 
     doubly aware--and duty bound--to raise our voices when the 
     deadly brew of religious bigotry and wanton violence are 
     mixed.
       Today in Syria, a once thriving Christian population--a 
     community nearly as ancient as that country's once great 
     Jewish community--has been depopulated by 25 percent, 
     according an estimate the Patriarch Melkite Greek Catholic 
     Patriarch Gregorios III Laham shared with the BBC.
       In September, The Associated Press reported that Syrian 
     Christians in Maaloula--a community dating to the birth of 
     Christianity and that still speaks Aramaic--were driven out 
     or forcibly converted to Islam by rebels aligned with al-
     Qaeda.
       ``It is chaos, it is violence, it is blood, it is death. 
     Life has been paralyzed. We have lost everything,'' said 
     Archbishop Theophile Georges Kassab of Homs.
       In Egypt, some supporters of ousted President Mohammed 
     Morsi last summer unleashed their rage against that nation's 
     Christians, a historic community constituting 20 percent of 
     the country's population. Mobs burned dozens of Christian 
     schools, convents, monasteries, institutions, and churches of 
     any, and all Christian denominations. And just days ago, 
     gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire outside a Coptic Christian 
     church during a wedding, murdering four, including an 8-year-
     old girl.
       ``It never happened before in history that such a big 
     number of churches were attacked on one day,'' Bishop Thomas, 
     a Coptic Orthodox bishop in Assiut told Al Jazeera. ``We 
     normally used to have attacks once a month or so.''
       As Kristallnacht teaches, the burning of houses of worship 
     can be a red alert that worse is yet to come. September saw 
     the horrific Taliban bombing of Anglican worshippers in 
     Pakistan, which took 85 lives, and, according to accounts 
     shared by witnesses, the targeting for murder of Kenyan 
     Christians--deliberately separated from others in a chilling 
     reminder of Nazi ``selections''--by al Shabaab terrorists in 
     a Nairobi shopping mall.
       Attacks like these have contributed to a decline in the 
     Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa from 
     9.5 percent to 3.8 percent of the total population from 1910 
     to 2010, according to a Pew Forum report on Global 
     Christianity.
       Tellingly, Israel is the only Middle East country where the 
     Christian population has grown in the last half century, from 
     34,000 to 158,000, in large measure, according to many 
     observers, because of the religious freedoms enjoyed there.
       As a Jew, I'm proud of the status of religious minorities 
     in the Jewish state. As an American, I'm especially proud to 
     live in a society where people of different faiths (and no 
     faith) share the values of tolerance and coexistence. Despite 
     isolated though sometimes deadly instances of religiously-
     inspired terror during the past few decades, ours is a nation 
     where no Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or 
     person of any other faith must live in fear because of who 
     they are.
       It is time to sound the alarm about the religious 
     persecutions of Christians and others. Let us raise our 
     voices, and call on our elected representatives to take 
     action. People of all faiths should support passage of H.R. 
     301, legislation that would direct our President to appoint a 
     State Department Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom 
     of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central 
     Asia.
       The bill will facilitate U.S. government responses to human 
     rights violations, combat acts of religious intolerance and 
     incitement targeting religious minorities, and help address 
     the needs of religious minorities.
       Further, we must demand that international institutions 
     designed to protect human rights, especially the United 
     Nations, must actually do so without prejudice.
       For people of conscience, for people of all faiths, now is 
     not the time to be silent.

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