Don’t be fooled: Assad is no friend of Syria’s Christian minorities

[TomSea]

Don’t be fooled: Assad is no friend of Syria’s Christian minorities

May 12, 2017 by yalibnan 171 Comments
A poster by Syrian Research and Evaluation organization that reads: Assad and ISIS are one and the same


BY BAHNAN YAMIN, SAMIRA MOUBAYED, MIRNA BARQ, AND GEORGE STIFO

Last week, during a markup of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asserted that the Assad regime was “the protector of the Christians” in Syria.

As Syrian Christians who grew up in Syria, we would beg to differ. Hundreds of innocent Christians seeking freedom have been tortured to death in Assad’s jails or shot to death by his brutal thugs – including the activist Bassel Shehadeh, who was killed at a protest, then killed in spirit because Assad forces prevented his friends from going to church to pray for his soul. Human rights lawyer Khalil Maatouk has been detained in Assad’s jails in Damascus for over four years for the “crime” of defending detainees in Assad’s jails.

These anecdotes are not new and are not isolated incidents. Christians never had true freedom of religion under the Assad regime; for decades, it used a mixture of incentives and threats to tightly control Christian clergy and ensure that they were not free to speak their mind. Christians were much more free before Assad took power, when Protestant Christian Fares al-Khouri was elected prime minister of Syria in democratic elections in 1954. But under Assad, Rohrbacher might be surprised to know, Christians are legally banned from becoming the head of state.

Continued: http://yalibnan.com/2017/05/12/dont-be-fooled-assad-is-no-friend-of-syrias-christian-minorities/

[Fishrrman]

There is no "good side" there.

I would be relieved if that country -- including its entire population other than the Christians -- simply... disappeared from the earth.

Perhaps that offends you.
But I don't care.