Bishops kidnapped in Syria

On the occasion of Easter, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) would like to remember the abduction of the Archbishop of the Syrian-Orthodox Church, Mor Gregorius Yohanna Ibrahim, and the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, Boulos Yazigi, twelve years ago. “The abduction of the two bishops of the northern Syrian metropolis of Aleppo is exemplary for the situation of the Christians and other religious communities in Syria. The German Federal Government, but also the major churches in Germany, must not lose sight of the situation of these minority groups,” demanded Sarah Reinke, head of human rights work at the STP, in Göttingen on Wednesday.

The two Christian dignitaries had been abducted close to the Syrian-Turkish border on April 22, 2013. On the initiative of the STP, former Federal President Christian Wulff had contacted the Turkish government, but he did not receive any information – although the Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are backing almost all Sunni-Islamist militias in Syria.

After the fall of the brutal Assad regime in 2024, many prisons were closed and many prisoners who had survived the regime’s torture chambers were released. “Now, initiatives to come to terms with the crimes of the Assad era are one of the most important tasks for Syria’s society – but also for the international society. There must be no impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Reinke emphasized.

Back then, the region where they were abducted had been under the control of today’s Islamist rulers, and nowadays, members of religious minorities – especially the Alawites – are suffering from brutal persecution by the Islamist forces. The two Bishops were seen as mediators and ambassadors for human rights in the Syrian civil war. For their commitment, they had been honored – in absentia – with the 2014 Weimar Human Rights Award, following a nomination by the STP.

The concerns of the Christians, the Alawites, the Druze, the Yazidis – and also within the country’s largest minority group, the Kurds – can only be alleviated through an inclusive democratization process. “The Islamists must give up their plans to turn Syria into an Islamic theocracy. As long as the minority groups and the women are excluded from the political process, Syria will not become more stable. While the new rulers in Damascus present themselves as moderate to the outside world, they are brutally cracking down on minorities internally, excluding them from the political process.”