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Press Release 26th APRIL 2001
JUBILEE CAMPAIGNS AT UNITED NATIONS TO STOP MASS FORCED
CONVERSIONS AND GENOCIDE
The Christian human rights group, the Jubilee Campaign, has this month raised several human rights issues, including the mass forced conversions of Christians in the Moluccas and the genocide against the Karen, Karenni and Shan people of Burma at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Jubilee Campaign urged that strong pressure be put on the government of Indonesia to evacuate to a place of safety all those Christians forced to convert to Islam in the Moluccas islands. Islamic militants have forced about 5000 or more Moluccan Christians to convert to Islam, and the penalty for refusal is death. While several Christians have been killed for refusing to change religion, thousands have converted to Islam. All the male and female adults and children who have converted to Islam have been forcibly circumcised by the Muslim militants. Although not a part of orthodox Islamic beliefs, this practice of female circumcision by the militants has resulted in widespread female genital mutilation on girls as young as one year old.
At the UN Human Rights Commission Jubilee Campaign called on the Indonesian government to evacuate all the forced converts to a place of safety so they can return to practising their Christian faith. Although the Indonesian government has evacuated such converts from Kesui and Teor islands, they have so far been reluctant to evacuate the other areas like Bacan, Seram and Buru islands where Christians have been forced to change their religion.
In addition, Jubilee drew the Commission's attention to the kidnap and forced conversions to Islam of Christian women and girls in Pakistan and Egypt and the widespread practice of enslaving Christian and animist women and children in Sudan, who are usually forced to convert to Islam, by their slave masters.
Jubilee highlighted the case of 15 year old Nadia Klaimason, a Pakistani Christian girl abducted by a Muslim moneylender and forced to convert to Islam on February 11th this year. Jubilee called for strong international pressure to be put on the governments of Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan to stop the forced conversions to Islam in their countries.
Jubilee called for action to end the continuing government crackdown against Christians in Turkmenistan and highlighted the desperate plight of Shegaldy Atakov, a Christian leader framed on swindling charges, who has been serving his sentence in a labour camp. Due to the harsh mistreatment which he has been receiving and his weak health, Shegaldy told his wife on her last visit to him that he did not expect to survive much longer.
Another case raised at the U.N Human Rights Commission was that of Father Yusuf Akbulut, an Assyrian Christian priest in southeast Turkey charged with crimes against public order simply because he refused to publicly deny that the 1915 genocide against the Assyrians and Armenians had taken place. Over 80 years after the genocide which claimed more than one and a half million lives, the Turkish authorities continue to deny that it ever occurred. A few days after Jubilee's statement to the U.N Human Rights Commission, the charges against Father Yusuf Akbulut were dropped.
Jubilee's Researcher and Parliamentary Officer, Wilfred Wong, who made the statements at the U.N, says, " It is appalling that in some Islamic countries Christians are being forced to convert to Islam. This is just one of the numerous attacks which Christians in some parts of the Islamic world have to endure. It is a form of religious apartheid which is still widely unacknowledged by the international community so it was very helpful that we were able to raise this issue at a high level forum like the U.N Human Rights Commission."
Jubilee also drew the Commission's attention to the ongoing genocide against the Karen, Karenni and Shan minority peoples in Burma. There are over 642,000 internally displaced Karen, Karenni and Shan people in Burma, many of them hiding in the jungle from the Burmese army who normally kill them on sight.
Jubilee called on the U.N Human Rights Commission and all its member states to put strong pressure on Burma's military regime to stop its atrocities against the Karen, Karenni and Shan people and to set up an international commission of enquiry to investigate the allegations against Burma's military regime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Received via email from: "Iwanov T" <iwanov_t@yahoo.com>
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