Bits and Bites from Around the World > The ancient villages of the Bavona Valley like something out of Tolkien

 

This Hamlet Looks Like Tolkien’s Shire, Believed 5,000 Years Old—And People Still Live Here Off-Grid

Just a glimpse here. Please go to The Epoch Times, Bright, for the full article.

It must be incredibly quiet!

‘There Are No Girls Left’: Syria’s Christian Villages Hollowed Out by ISIS

Sometimes I wonder if God removes Christian people from certain countries before He is about to bring down a heavy judgment upon that country. 

Ishaq Nisaan at the ruins of a church he helped build in the village where he grew up in Syria.

Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

By Ben Hubbard, NYT

TEL TAL, Syria — The memories of the retired oilman dot the village in Syria where he grew up. The mud chapel he got married in. The concrete church he helped build that would overflow with worshipers on holidays. The tight community of Assyrian Christian families who had lived together in this area for generations.

Now it’s a village of ghosts.

The church is a pile of rubble, its bell tower and its cross toppled over like a felled tree. The dirt paths are overgrown, walked by stray dogs. Most homes are empty, their owners in Germany, Australia, the United States and elsewhere.

Not Canada. Our government doesn't like Christians!

“All the houses used to be full,” said the oilman, Ishaq Nisaan, 79. “Now on my street, it’s only me and my neighbor.”

The same fate has befallen all the surrounding villages, where Assyrian Christians, one of Syria’s many religious minorities, had long farmed and raised animals along the banks of the Khabur River in the country’s northeast.

A destroyed Christian church near Tal Tamer in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria. 

Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

The Islamic State attacked the area in 2015, kidnapping more than 220 residents. The jihadists were pushed out a few months later by Kurdish forces and local fighters, and released most of the captives after receiving exorbitant ransoms.

But the extremists demolished many of the area’s churches before they left, and almost all of the freed captives, along with their families and neighbors, have since fled, hollowing out the community.

“Life here is very nice, but there are no people,” said Ramina Noya, 23, a member of the local council governing the area. She stayed, but most of her relatives are in the United States.

Seven years of war in Syria have displaced half the country’s population and sent millions of refugees abroad. As the government of President Bashar al-Assad reclaims more territory from the rebels who sought to oust him, some people may return.

Nabil Youkhanna, 35, at his home in Tel Shamiran, Syria, where only he and his mother now live. “If we want to get married, there are no girls left,” he said. Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

But other vulnerable communities, like the one here in Tel Tal, were so traumatized that they may never recover, leaving permanent holes in Syria’s social fabric.

The number of Christians across the Middle East has been declining for decades as persecution and poverty have led to widespread migration. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, considered Christians infidels and forced them to pay special taxes, accelerating the trend in Syria and Iraq.

In this area of Syria, the exodus has been swift.

Some 10,000 Assyrian Christians lived in more than 30 villages here before the war began in 2011, and there were more than two dozen churches. Now, about 900 people remain and only one church holds regular services, said Shlimon Barcham, a local official with the Assyrian Church of the East.

Some of the villages are entirely empty. One has five men left who protect the ruins of the Virgin Mary Church, whose foundations the jihadists dynamited. Another village has only two residents — a mother and her son.

Mr. Barcham doubted that many people would return. “They all say nice things about wanting to come back, but I don’t think they will,” he said.

Assyrians are an indigenous Middle Eastern minority who trace their roots to the ancient Assyrian empire. Their main modern communities are in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and a few Western countries. They belong to a number of churches, including the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, and they speak a dialect of Aramaic.

When the Islamic State began its rampage across Iraq and Syria, the jihadists killed or enslaved Shiite Muslims and Yazidis, but they sought to make money off the Assyrians, probably assuming that their relatives abroad would pay dearly to have them released.

That tactic worked. Even before ISIS emerged, Assyrians had been leaving the Middle East for decades, and many in the diaspora rallied to help their brethren held captive in Syria, holding fund-raisers and sending cash from abroad for ransom payments, which were handled by a local Assyrian bishop, Mr. Barcham said.

Samira Nikola, 65, feeding her chickens in the Christian village of Tel Shamiran. “Just keep the evil people away from us,” she said. Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

The extremists demanded as much as $50,000 for the release of individual captives, but often accepted lower sums. The church has never revealed exactly how much it paid the Islamic State, but most assume it was more than a million dollars.

Not everyone was saved. Three hostages dressed in orange jumpsuits were killed in a video the jihadists sent to goad payments for others. One kidnapped woman never returned. Villagers assumed she was forced to marry an ISIS fighter.

Those days of fear and violence in the villages are gone, but the scars they left are everywhere.

Sitting alone in front of his house in Tel Tal, Oshana Kasho Oshana, 81, said he had been kidnapped by ISIS fighters and held for 30 days while his relatives negotiated his release, eventually paying about $13,000.

Many family members were already abroad, and he left after his release, joining two of his sons in Germany. Now, of his seven children, only one remains in Syria, but not in the village.

Abandoned homes in the village of Tel Tal. Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Mr. Oshana still comes back home from Germany at least once a year, even if that means staying alone in his house in a mostly empty village.

“It’s like a ghost town, but our village is valuable to us and we cannot leave it,” he said.

In another village, Tel Shamiran, only Samira Nikola, 65, remains with her adult son.

She, too, was kidnapped by the Islamic State with her husband and four other relatives, three of them children. After her release, she returned to find her home looted and her family’s truck and two milk cows gone, stolen by the jihadists.

She put the house back together and works with her son to raise chickens and grow cucumbers, grapes and olives in the garden around their mud farmhouse.

Her other children are in Australia or Germany, but she does not want to leave.

“Just keep the evil people away from us,” she said. “We don’t ask anything else of God.”

Her son, Nabil Youkhanna, 35, said he had stayed to be with her but was not sure how long he would last because the community was so small.

“We are staying, but for how long?” he said. “If we want to get married, there are no girls left.”

A local Assyrian militia patrols the area to keep out looters, but Mr. Youkhanna said he no longer trusts the Arabs in the nearby villages since he assumed they had helped the Islamic State.

“In the old days, we would see each other on the road and greet each other,” he said. “Now, no one says anything.”

Myanmar: ‘400 Villages Destroyed, 150,000 People Displaced’ in Kachin State

These are mostly Christian victims as Myanmar's ethnic cleansing

is not confined to Muslims

An elderly Kachin woman looks for shelter after fleeing fighting between Myanmar’s army and Kachin rebels in December 2011. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

More than 400 villages have been damaged or destroyed and 150,000 people displaced since the collapse of a ceasefire in 2011 between Myanmar’s army and rebels in northern Kachin state, reports Catholic website AsiaNews.

In 2018 alone, 50 villages were abandoned and more than 7,000 people fled their homes, seeking refuge in local churches, with host families or relatives, or in official camps for internally displaced people (IDPs).

Many people have been killed or injured by landmines – 13 people died this year and 39 suffered serious injuries since fighting escalated in January this year – according to the charity Caritas Myanmar.

Of those displaced since the collapse of the 17-year ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Myanmar government, 130,000 live in the 165 IDP camps dotted all over Kachin and across the north of neighbouring Shan state.

Furthermore, 311 churches, 24 Buddhist monasteries, 34 childcare centres, 122 schools, and 264 outpatient clinics have been destroyed, Caritas Myanmar says.

It seems obvious that Myanmar is determined to protect its Buddhist religion by cleansing the country of those that might compete with it. This, quite possibly, is what Europe is headed for if they don't stop the mad influx of Muslims into the continent.

I wonder how long it will be before mainstream media report this, or if they ever will report this?

Two weeks ago a Catholic church in Kamaing Kawng Ra village was hit by military fire, leaving bullet holes in the walls and an unexploded shell in the church compound. A toddler was wounded after a second shell exploded near her home, sending shrapnel fragments through the bamboo walls, Catholic news site UCAN reported.

About 300 Catholics from the village, and some 45 IDPs who fled their homes a month ago, are staying in a hall near the church compound, according to UCAN.

‘Invisible war’

The violence against the minority Christian population in Kachin “is an invisible war”, San Htoi, the joint secretary of Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper in May. She said that on a recent visit, representatives of the United Nations Security Council went only to Rakhine state and “left the country without knowing [about Kachin]”.

The new UN envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, started her visit to the country yesterday (12 June), where she will discuss the Rohingya refugee crisis with officials and meet with civil society groups, religious leaders and members of the diplomatic community.

The International Criminal Court has been called upon to investigate the atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims, after the government was accused of genocide. And human rights activist Ewelina Ochab says “decisive” action is needed to prevent further crimes against humanity.

“First, they [the government] came for the Rohingya Muslims… then they came for the Christian minorities, and little will change if there will be no decisive steps to address the situation,” she wrote. Then they will come for all other minorities in Burma, and so our humanity will suffer yet another blow.”

Kachin State, Myanmar