Vatican conference hears eyewitness reports from genocide survivors

Rohingya exodus - image Christian Aid

Source: Vatican Media,

Religious freedom and how to defend it internationally was the theme of a one-day symposium held at the Pontifical Holy Cross University on 25 June. The US Embassy to the Holy See hosted the event in partnership with Aid to the Church in Need, and the Sant'Egidio community. US Ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrich, opened the symposium explaining the US commitment to the defence of religious freedom.

Iraqi genocide survivor, Yazidi Salwa Khalaf Rasho, and Ziear Khan a campaigner for the Rohingya people provided powerful Victim Impact Statements.

Salwa Raso said: "In August 2014, ISIS/Daish attacked our region and committed horrendous atrocities against my people..About 60 mass graves have been found in my town Sinjar… More than 6,000 women and girls were kidnapped, including me and many of my relatives. We have been subjected to all types of sexual and physical abuse and violence."

Rasho was one of those kidnapped women, saying she had been "subjected to unthinkable practices… More than 3,000 of these women and girls are still missing, enduring a fate of daily rape and torture which has constituted their lives for the past four years."

She gave a six-point action plan for the international community:

1. The reconstruction and de-mining of our homeland, and the provision of the necessary services for those who are willing to return to their homes.

2. Uncovering the fate of more than 3,000 Yazidis still in Islamic state captivity.

3. Taking urgent steps to protect more than 60 mass graves in Sinjar area to preserve the evidence prepared for opening an international investigation into these crimes.

4. Bringing minority areas in Iraq and Syria under international protection.

5. Aiding the international investigation team set up by the United Nations under UN Security Council Resolution 2379 to investigate Islamic State crimes in Iraq.

6. Opening the door for Yazidi refugees and other minorities facing persecution in Iraq and Syria.

She concluded: "These steps are the only way of preserving the existence of minorities in the region, especially Yazidi and Christians. If this action is not taken, our existence, identity and culture will be wiped out - fulfilling the aim of the Islamic State."

Ziear Khan described the Rohingya people as "the most persecuted group in the world right now. He said: "I've seen first-hand the horrific trauma they've been put through."

Khan described meeting a 12-year-old boy walking along a street, who said both his father and brother had been killed in front of him. He said he met a woman in the eighth month of pregnancy with her four children, and, when he asked where her husband was, she said his throat had been cut, his body dragged through town and then hanged.

"I think about the lessons we need to learn. I think about Rwanda and the Holocaust. I think about the day when I will be questioned by my Lord about what we did when thousands of people were killed."

Khan suggested a trade embargo on Myanmar could be imposed until targeted killings of Rohingya stop.

Cardinal-designate Coutts, Archbishop of Karachi, Pakistan, Mgr Akasheh from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and Professor Marco Impagliazzo, President of the Community of Sant'Egidio, sat on a panel on promoting religious freedom through dialogue and sustainable action.

"There are forces at work within society, Islamic groups and others, with the idea that Pakistan should be an Islamic state with Islamic laws, a theocratic state like Saudi Arabia," Coutts said. He pointed among other things to the deletion of a right to "propagate" non-Muslim religions from the national constitution under the country's military regime in the 1970s, and the introduction of so-called "blasphemy laws" that criminalise insulting the prophet Muhammad or desecrating the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book.

"What's happening is that the law is very easily misused….It's enough to accuse somebody and you're finished. It's causing a lot of problems right now … people have been killed, even lynched, and the person is not in a position to defend himself because of emotionalism."

Coutts cited the case of Asia Bibi, an illiterate mother and farm worker from the Punjab, and a Catholic, who was accused of blasphemy and is currently on Pakistan's death row.

"Most people know this is probably a cooked-up case, but the government is afraid to take it forward because they're afraid of an emotional reaction … Our government is not strong enough to control the kind of extremism that's developing in the country."

Another panel regarding religious minorities in the Middle East was made up of Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, and Mark Riedemann from Aid to the Church in Need.

Cardinal Sandri raised the issue of "asking ourselves how and in what measure the inviolable rights of the human person are really guaranteed and promoted within our social and political systems. Otherwise, on various fronts, we risk committing the same errors which the West (even though motivated by good intentions) committed in the Middle East in preceding decades when it wanted to 'export' a model of democracy in those lands".

Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, provided the Symposium's closing remarks saying that, "In the midst of the many situations which challenge the right to freedom of religion and conscience, the Catholic Church encourages all people of good will to continue to raise awareness in order to allow members of various religious communities to enjoy freedom of religion fully and to profess freely and publicly their faith in every part of the world".