Churches around the world are concerned about the fate of migrants fleeing from poverty or violence in their home countries. In Africa, the promise of a better life is luring many young people to Europe and the USA, where a lot of them end up as illegal migrants. In Sri Lanka, the armed conflict between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is producing migrants by the thousands who now live in fear of abduction. In Jordan and Syria, some Iraqi Christians have waited for immigrants' visas for more than ten years.
Stories like these, told at a 6-8 June 2007 conference on migration, challenged churches to play a more central role in addressing this issue.
Participants representing churches, church-related organisations and ecumenical bodies from Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Latin America the Middle East, North America and the Pacific attended the conference of the Global Ecumenical Network on Migration (GEM), hosted by the All-Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and held in Nairobi, Kenya. The GEM network was formed in 2006 by the World Council of Churches (WCC) to engage and challenge churches in their work with migrants, replaying what used to be the Global Ecumenical Network on Uprooted people, created in 1999.
The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) in Amman, Jordan, for example, is currently providing humanitarian aid for Christian refugees from what Middle Eastern churches are now calling "one of the world's fastest-growing refugee crises". Since the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein began in Iraq, two million people have been displaced, the majority of whom, according to the UN, have fled to the neighbouring Arab countries, Iran and Turkey. Among them are also members of Iraq's Christian minority, many of whom feel they have no future in Iraq whatever the outcome of the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict, says George J. Hazou, chairperson of the department of services for Palestinian refugees in the MECC.
With the fall of Hussein, these Christians became targets, Hazou told the GEM conference, with churches being bombed and Christians being kidnapped, after years of living peacefully with Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. "In some Muslims' minds, Christians were associated with western forces," he said, adding that Christian women took to wearing veils to avoid being attacked on the streets.
Another story of violent conflict was the one told by Rev. Freddy De Alwis, joint executive secretary for Justice, International Affairs, Development and Services in the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) on the situation in Sri Lanka which he described as "going from bad to worse".
De Alwis is not only critical of the government, but also of the church, which "did so many things in the past," but now seems to be "sleeping": "They are only trying to do evangelisation, church-planting and Christianization, and that's it. They are not bothered about the people, because the people living in the north-east are mainly Hindus and Muslims."
Though his church has been monitoring the problem of abductions by gunmen - a daily threat for refugees in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo -, De Alwis is concerned that the church hierarchy is not worrying enough about it. "Innocent people are victims. That's why I am so angry," he said.
