For a couple weeks now I have debated the importance of a special accomandation for Christian asylum seekers in Sweden. Here is one of many reasons:
They were led to room 26. She put her things down, sat exhausted on the bed and smiled at her children so that they wouldn’t sense her panic. She was alone with two small children, a Christian woman from Syria. Her husband had been kidnapped and killed by Islamists who don’t think Christians have the right to live. In room 27 there was another of those Islamists, who think that she and her children do not have the right to exist.
On Thursday, February 11, Swedish Minister for Justice and Migration Morgan Johansson and Désirée Pethrus (Christian Democrats) debated the situation for Christians in the Swedish accommodations for asylum seekers. The Minister admitted that he knew Christians were persecuted but that the authorities are doing enough to protect them. At the same time he said that perpetrators cannot be moved; there is nowhere to move them: “We have to see the existing problems, not neglect them but rather take them very seriously. But at the same time there is a tendency outside this house to inflate the problems and give them exaggerated proportions.”
The Minister continued: “I also said in my first contribution that I am fully aware that Christians in these situations may be in an especially exposed position and for this reason it is a matter for us to be vigilant to this and the community to be prepared to take action.”
The Minister must have the wrong advisers on these issues. I’d be happy to put my material at his disposal. He claims that more guards, more education, more information and more police interventions are enough, but demonstrably they are not. He said: “But at this moment we have quite a lot in our tool box that we can use.”
Enough already with words like “tool box”! The government must act according to reality, when it comes to people who are harassed, abused, raped, threatened with murder and even murdered. Representatives of the government and authorities present an alarming attitude. They sound more like Mohammed Said as-Sahaf, also referred to as “Bagdad-Bob”, who was Saddam Hussein’s spokesperson and in this capacity claimed that the situation was under control, that the media inflated the Iraqi government’s losses, when people could see with their own eyes that it was a lie. Several members of parliament have written interpellations, on the basis of their own sources about the extent of religious persecution in accommodations for asylum seekers.
In the last few days I have had long conversations with a number of voluntary organizations in Germany. They have investigated persecutions of Christians and Yazidis in accommodations for asylum seekers. These organizations, with the help of private individuals, are rapidly finding other accommodations for asylum seekers from these religious groups. The same goes for France. Someone has to do it also in Sweden, and I have taken upon myself to do it, reluctantly. I don’t wish to add to the polarization, I am in favor of an open society where everyone, regardless of religion, sexuality, ethnicity and political persuasion can live together. But unfortunately the truth is that many who have fled from religious persecution in their home countries now flee from the same persecution in Sweden.
The word “challenge” is often used by the Swedish government and authorities. A new “challenge” now for them is to stop the religious, ethnic and political persecution that exists in our accommodations for asylum seekers. An emergency action plan would be to open an accommodation for Christian asylum seekers. The government cannot be allowed to bury their head in the sand. The woman and her two children in room 26 must be protected now.
