UK is failing Syrian Christians, says Carey
CHRISTIAN refugees from Syria are being discriminated against by the Government, a former archbishop of Canterbury says today.
Lord Carey of Clifton claims in an article for The Daily Telegraph that “politically correct” officials are biased against Christian refugees, who are under-represented in the numbers being moved to the UK.
The former archbishop’s comments came as Russian and American diplomats agreed to restore dialogue over the crisis in Syria following a week of escalating tensions that ended in Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin exchanging insults.
Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said both countries would back a UN investigation into last week’s deadly poison gas attack.
The two countries held talks in Moscow yesterday, which included a twohour discussion in which Mr Tillerson tried to persuade Mr Putin to abandon support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian conflict and persecution from Islamic extremists has caused many of the country’s Christians to flee. But figures show that less than 1 per cent of the Syrian refugees resettled by a UK scheme in the third quarter of last year were Christians.
Lord Carey said: “In the run-up to Easter, British taxpayers will be appalled by this institutional bias against Christians by politically correct officials. In this, the British government is not just breaking its manifesto pledge to look after Christian refugees, it also appears to be breaking the law.” His view is supported by legal opinion from
a human rights lawyer which suggests that Syrian Christians are subject to “indirect discrimination” under European human rights laws. In his legal opinion, Paul Diamond argues that as Christians have been subject to genocide, the Government is legally obliged to help them.
Figures from the Barnabas Fund, a Christian charity, show that the Government’s Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, which resettles refugees from Syria, has accepted a tiny number of Christians since September 2015.
Just 51 of the 2,592 refugees accepted between Sept 7, 2015 and June 30, 2016 were Christian. In the most recent data, obtained by the charity under Freedom of Information laws, just 13 of the 1,583 refugees accepted between July and September last year were Christian.
This is despite Christians making up around 10 per cent of the population before the civil war began in 2011.
The former archbishop’s stance was backed by fellow members of the House of Lords.
Lord Anderson of Swansea, the Labour peer, said: “The evidence is clear – Christian minorities are being chased out of the Middle East, the birthplace of the Christian faith, and the British Government in its aid policies is not responding adequately to this crisis.”
A government spokesman said: “UK aid is provided in line with humanitarian principles, so whoever needs our help the most gets it first, regardless of race, gender or religion.”