Nina Shea reports:
Why is the United States barring a persecuted Iraqi Catholic nun — an internationally respected and leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been killed and deported by ISIS — from coming to Washington to testify about this catastrophe?
Earlier this week, we learned that every member of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups, including representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities, has been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington — save one. The single delegate whose visitor visa was denied happens to be the group’s only Christian from Iraq. . . . [More...]
Update: Nina Shea stands by her story in the face of State Department intimidation.
. . . As an articulate, English-speaking Iraqi Christian, who is not only personally a victim of ISIS but also an aid worker with a broad perspective on the suffering of the Christian community there, Sister Diana would make an exceptional witness.
Whether conscious or not of her high value in that regard, those who decided to block Sister Diana from entering this country on a visitor visa acted in a manner consistent with the administration’s pattern of silence when it comes to the Christian profile of so many of the jihadists’ “convert-or-die” victims in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Kenya, and Iraq. In typical U.S. condolence statements, targeted Christians have been identified simply as “lives lost,” “Egyptian citizens,” “Kenyan people,” “innocent victims,” or “innocent Iraqis.”
Me: It's certainly true that the Obama administration cares not a fig about religious persecution around the world, but in addition to that, it has developed a particularly strong animosity toward reporting atrocities and persecutions committed against Christians. I have almost finished reading the remarkable story of Bob Fu [God's Double Agent], who as a Chinese advocate for religious freedom secured wonderful cooperation from the George W. Bush White House and President George Bush himself. The contrast between Presidents Bush and Obama could not be more dramatic. GWB put religious freedom high on his list of foreign policy concerns. From all the evidence, the current occupant of the White House despises Christians.