The UK Home Office’s Independent Advisory Group on Country Information issued guidance in August to staff assessing applications for asylum from Syria which disturbingly makes no reference whatsoever to Christians.
This is despite the fact that it is now widely accepted that Christians in Syria are facing genocide. Instead the guidance simply asks staff assessing asylum claims to ask: ‘if the person’s fear is of serious harm or persecution on the basis of actual or perceived support for the Assad regime / rebel groups, the onus will be on that person to establish that they are unable to obtain sufficient protection from that regime / group’.
Based on Islamic law
Christians in Syria are targeted by Islamist groups. When their towns and villages have been captured they are subject to summary execution, forced conversion, enslavement, enforced dhimmitude (subjugated, non-citizen status) and religious cleansing. These are not random acts of violence; they are directly based on Islamic shari’a law.
Further, the same department has guidance telling staff that senior members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) should be considered for asylum in the UK. It states that senior members of the organisation ‘may be able to show that they are at risk of persecution, including of being held in detention, where they may be at risk of ill-treatment, trial also without due process and disproportionate punishment’.
It fails to mention that MB supporters have been mounting violent attacks on Egyptian Christians, who they blame for taking part in anti-government street protests during the time of the Muslim Brotherhood government.’
