A Demand For Action

29/05/2026

Congratulations to His Beatitude Mar Paul III Nona, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Barekh Mor!


البطريركية الكلدانية Chaldean Patriarchate
Chaldean Press The Chaldean News Middle Eastern Christian | مسيحيو الشرق الأوسط Catholic News Agency Nuri Seyhan Kino Tidningen Dagen Kyrkans Tidning LT.se Christian Youhana

29/05/2026

The fields around Sinjar look empty. They are not. Beneath the soil, and inside the houses still standing, ISIS buried thousands of hidden bombs before it was driven out.

Hana Khider walks into those fields every morning. She is a Yazidi woman from Sinjar, in Iraq’s Nineveh province, and she leads a team of women who clear the land one meter at a time. They search for the wires and triggers that ISIS left in the same place where, in August 2014, those fighters tried to erase the Yazidi people from the earth. Here, a single mistake does not grant a second one.

Consider what that means. ISIS came to Sinjar to kill the men and enslave the women. The women it failed to break are now the ones kneeling in the dirt, taking apart what it left behind, so that families can come home and farm land that was meant to stay deadly.

It is the oldest story in this part of the world, told again on the plains of Nineveh. People who were meant to disappear refuse to.

Khider works with the Mines Advisory Group, part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Her story is told in ”Into the Fire,” directed by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel and produced with Grain Media for National Geographic and the Nobel Prize.

It is a film about the slowest, most patient form of courage. Watch it.

26/05/2026

The filmmaker and reporter team Daniel Allott and Jordan Allott went to Syria on a mission together with ADFA to explore the situation of ethnic and religious minorities and indigenous people in Syria. See the full report via the link in the comments.

Yesterday’s news from Bab Touma, the predominantly Christian part of Damascus, made this reporting important once again. In a rally, chants of Eid takbirs were heard while marchers moved through Bab Touma. What is alarming is that similar scenes were reported in Alawite neighborhoods in Latakia and Jableh yesterday and today.

The world must open its eyes to the reality of Syria. Behind the headlines claiming that things are moving in the right direction lies the daily reality faced by Syrians.

We will continue to raise awareness about the situation and continue advocating for a Syria for all Syrians.

22/05/2026

Nuri Kino Cited in Canadian Report on Syria’s Minorities

The article, written by award-winning Canadian journalist Susan Korah for The Catholic Register, highlights growing concern over the worsening situation for Christians and other minorities in Syria.

ADFA’s founder Nuri Kino is cited warning about escalating persecution and insecurity facing Christians, Druze and Alawites in the country.

The article examines criticism directed at Canada’s ambassador to Syria, Gregory Galligan, after he presented an optimistic assessment of the post-Assad government before Canada’s House of Commons. Activists, survivors and humanitarian organizations argue that such statements ignore the reality faced by minorities on the ground.

Kino spoke about a foiled bomb attack targeting a Christian funeral in Aleppo on May 13.

“We are deeply concerned, and outraged,” Kino told The Catholic Register. “We called our contacts in Syria immediately and spoke to two witnesses to the incident. Now we can only thank Our Lord that the bomb did not detonate.”

He also warned that Syria’s ancient Christian community may disappear entirely unless the international community acts.

“What’s happening now is ethno-religious cleansing. A slow systematic removal of minorities through fear, violence and dispossession. The world must wake up now and demand stronger protection for Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.”

The article also reports on massacres targeting Alawite and Druze communities, widespread displacement, collapsing healthcare and growing accusations that Western governments are relying too heavily on the Syrian regime’s own narrative while independent witnesses describe an increasingly dangerous reality for minorities. Link to article in comment.

12/05/2026

Nuri Kino is heading to the IRF Summit in Casablanca, Morocco, this July. It is his second invitation to the Summit this year.

In February, he addressed the Summit’s gathering in Washington, where more than 1,500 delegates from 87 countries had traveled to take part. His remarks drew a standing ovation. He was one of only 82 speakers entrusted with the podium. He spoke about displacement, about his own flight as a child, and about refugee children failed by asylum systems that promise due process. He laid out what needs to change.

In Casablanca, Nuri will speak on human rights, religious and ethnic persecution, and the relationship between social media, traditional newsrooms, and lawmakers.

We at ADFA are proud that our president, a decorated investigative journalist and human rights advocate, continues to carry this work to audiences around the world.

08/05/2026

THE MIGRATION COURTS MUST START FOLLOWING THE LAW

For more than 25 years, investigative journalist Nuri Kino has examined asylum systems, religious persecution and the treatment of vulnerable minorities. In a new investigation published in the Swedish newspaper Dagen on May 8, he once again turns his attention to Sweden’s migration authorities and uncovers what appears to be a systemic failure inside the migration court system.

Kino reviewed seven recent rulings from Sweden’s migration courts involving asylum seekers fleeing religious persecution. The cases are unrelated, yet the pattern is strikingly similar: rapid rejections, limited evidentiary review and no independent analysis of country information.

In several cases, new evidence documenting worsening persecution and armed conflict was submitted to the courts, only to be dismissed as “not new circumstances.”

One of the cases concerns a 19 year old student who, on Dec. 8, 2025, was taken from a classroom at Västerhöjd High School in the Swedish city of Skövde. He had just completed a presentation and been praised by his teacher when two border police officers entered the classroom and detained him in front of his classmates. His phone and laptop were confiscated. He was initially held at a police station and later spent nearly four months in a detention center run by the Swedish Migration Agency.

That case triggered Kino’s investigation into the migration courts.

Something did not add up.

Under both Swedish law and EU law, asylum cases must be assessed individually, fairly and on the basis of updated country information. Migration courts carry an independent responsibility to ensure that the evidence used in life altering decisions is broad, reliable and current. They cannot passively rely on the same authority whose decisions are under appeal.

Yet in the cases reviewed by Kino, there was little sign of meaningful independent analysis by the courts themselves.

Peter Islander, a former migration judge who now serves as chief legal officer at Sweden’s National Courts Administration, confirmed that much of the courts’ reasoning relies heavily on LIFOS, the Swedish Migration Agency’s internal database of country reports and origin information used in asylum cases.

At the same time, some of the world’s leading experts on religious persecution, including the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and Open Doors, do not appear to be routinely included in cases where religious persecution is central to the asylum claim.

Two high level sources within the court system described the same pattern: outdated country information, legal clerks without specialist expertise and judges working under severe time pressure.

In four of the seven cases reviewed, asylum seekers submitted new country information documenting deteriorating conditions in their home countries. New wars. Targeted persecution of religious minorities. Repression codified in newly adopted constitutions.

Yet the courts concluded that this did not constitute “new circumstances.”

Asylum law is not about average risks. It is about concrete threats against specific people and vulnerable groups.

One recent case illustrates the speed of the process. The Swedish Migration Agency rejected the application on March 27. The appeal reached the court on April 17. The court rejected the appeal on April 30.

Count the days. Remove the postal delivery time. Remove the public holidays.

How much time was actually spent reviewing the case?

Efficiency matters. But efficiency can never come before the law, and never before human lives.

This is not presented as an attack on individual judges or civil servants. It is a warning about a system that risks losing its ability to conduct fair and independent asylum reviews.

Migration courts must broaden the sources they rely on. They must actively use expertise from USCIRF, UNHCR, Open Doors and other specialized organizations. New country information must be examined seriously, not dismissed with standardized language. Legal clerks preparing evidence for judges must have the expertise required to understand persecution in practice.

The law is already clear.

Now it must also be followed.

I vissa fall har Migrationsverket inte använt sig av rätt information när beslutet fattades. Ska då inte det räknas som nya omständigheter hos domstolen? skriver Nuri Kino.

05/05/2026

Christians and Turkmens Press for Greater Political Voice in Iraq

ANKAWA, Iraq. Christian and Turkmen parties and organizations are calling for expanded political influence and stronger legal protections in Iraq. The demands appeared in a joint statement issued Monday after a meeting in Ankawa.

The meeting brought together Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac and Armenian representatives alongside Turkmen leaders.

A central demand is the reactivation of the regional parliament in Erbil, which participants called essential to democratic governance and want resumed without delay.

They also pressed for changes to the minority quota system, with the earlier allocation restored: six seats for Christians and five for Turkmens, and only voters from each community permitted to vote for those seats.

The statement was published by Ano Abdoka, minister of transport and communications in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Iraq's Christian population has fallen from an estimated 1.5 million before 2003 to about 150,000 today, according to church leaders and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Participants insisted that Christians and Turkmens must hold real influence in Iraq's next federal government in Baghdad and in the incoming KRG, in line with election results.

The statement was addressed to Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and former president of the region, along with Iraq's parliament and the KRG. A delegation will open talks with Iraqi and Kurdish leaders.

The European Union Agency for Asylum, the U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch have pointed to provisions in Iraqi law that disadvantage minorities. The constitution guarantees religious freedom but makes Islam the state religion and a key source of legislation.

Advocacy organisations, including the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), have also raised concerns about the situation of Iraq’s Christian communities.

Under the Personal Status Law, a Muslim man may marry a Christian woman, but a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man. Under the National Card Law, minor children are registered as Muslims if one parent converts, a rule long challenged by Christian and Yazidi groups.

03/05/2026

After 15 Years: The Church That Survived the Ruins of Deir ez-Zor

For the first time in 15 years, a Christian delegation led by Mor Aphrem II, the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, has visited the Church of St. Mary in Deir ez-Zor.

The church now stands as one of the last remaining religious structures in a city largely reduced to rubble during the war in Syria. Years of intense bombardment and fighting, followed by occupation by ISIS, forced the Christian population to flee almost entirely. During ISIS rule, Christians were systematically targeted, facing threats, confiscation of property, and forced displacement that effectively erased their presence from the city.

Now, amid ruins and shattered neighborhoods, a liturgy has been held once again. On the walls of the church, remnants of ISIS symbols and slogans can still be seen, even as the Lord’s Prayer is once again being sung within its damaged structure.

The visit marks the beginning of efforts to restore the church, but also something greater, an attempt to restore a voice to a community that was nearly silenced. In many cases, churches across Deir ez-Zor were damaged, repurposed, or destroyed, underscoring the deliberate nature of the erasure.

Today, almost no Christian presence remains in Deir ez-Zor. The churches that once bore witness to centuries of coexistence lie in ruins. St. Mary’s is an exception, not because it was spared, but because it is still standing.

What is happening now is fragile.
But it is also a sign that the story is not over.

ADFA continues to follow developments and to highlight the situation of religious and indigenous minorities in Syria, where reconstruction is not only about rebuilding structures, but about people, identity, and the right to remain.