#18-20 men raping a 30 year old woman | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rapeculturerealities · 4 years

Link

Ma Kyal Sin loved taekwondo, spicy food and a good red lipstick. She adopted the English name Angel, and her father hugged her goodbye when she went out on the streets of Mandalay, in central Myanmar, to join the crowds peacefully protesting the recent seizure of power by the military.

The black T-shirt that Ms. Kyal Sin wore to the protest on Wednesday carried a simple message: “Everything will be OK.”

In the afternoon, Ms. Kyal Sin, 18, was shot in the head by the security forces, who killed at least 30 people nationwide in the single bloodiest day since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the United Nations.

“She is a hero for our country,” said Ma Cho Nwe Oo, one of Ms. Kyal Sin’s close friends, who has also taken part in the daily rallies that have electrified hundreds of cities across Myanmar. “By participating in the revolution, our generation of young women shows that we are no less brave than men.”

Despite the risks, women have stood at the forefront of Myanmar’s protest movement, sending a powerful rebuke to the generals who ousted a female civilian leader and reimposed a patriarchal order that has suppressed women for half a century.

By the hundreds of thousands, the women have gathered for daily marches, representing striking unions of teachers, garment workers and medical workers — all sectors dominated by women. The youngest are often on the front lines, where the security forces appear to have singled them out. Two young women were shot in the head on Wednesday and another near the heart, three bullets ending their lives.

Earlier this week, military television networks announced that the security forces were instructed not to use live ammunition, and that in self-defense they would only shoot at the lower body.

“We might lose some heroes in this revolution,” said Ma Sandar, an assistant general secretary of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar, who has been taking part in the protests. “Our women’s blood is red.”

The violence on Wednesday, which brought the death toll since the coup to at least 54, reflected the brutality of a military accustomed to killing its most innocent people. At least three children have been gunned down over the past month, and the first death of the military’s post-coup crackdown was a 20-year-old woman shot in the head on Feb. 9.

The killings have appalled and outraged rights advocates around the world.

“Myanmar’s military must stop murdering and jailing protesters,” Michelle Bachelet, the top human rights official at the United Nations, said Thursday. “It is utterly abhorrent that security forces are firing live ammunition against peaceful protesters across the country.”

In the weeks since the protests began, groups of female medical volunteers have patrolled the streets, tending to the wounded and dying. Women have added spine to a civil disobedience movement that is crippling the functioning of the state. And they have flouted gender stereotypes in a country where tradition holds that garments covering the lower half of the bodies of the two sexes should not be washed together, lest the female spirit act as a contaminant.

With defiant creativity, people have strung up clotheslines of women’s sarongs, called htamein, to protect protest zones, knowing that some men are loath to walk under them. Others have affixed images of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief who orchestrated the coup, to the hanging htamein, an affront to his virility.

“Young women are now leading the protests because we have a maternal nature and we can’t let the next generation be destroyed,” said Dr. Yin Yin Hnoung, a 28-year-old medical doctor who has dodged bullets in Mandalay. “We don’t care about our lives. We care about our future generations.”

While the military’s inhumanity extends to many of the country’s roughly 55 million people, women have the most to lose from the generals’ resumption of full authority, after five years of sharing power with a civilian government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The Tatmadaw, as the military is known, is deeply conservative, opining in official communications about the importance of modest dress for proper ladies.

There are no women in the Tatmadaw’s senior ranks, and its soldiers have systematically committed gang rape against women from ethnic minorities, according to investigations by the United Nations. In the generals’ worldview, women are often considered weak and impure. Traditional religious hierarchies in this predominantly Buddhist nation also place women at the feet of men.

The prejudices of the military and the monastery are not necessarily shared by Myanmar’s broader society. Women are educated and integral to the economy, particularly in business, manufacturing and the civil service. Increasingly, women have found their political voice. In elections last November, about 20 percent of candidates for the National League for Democracy, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, were women.

The party won in a landslide, trouncing the military-linked and far more male-dominated Union Solidarity and Development Party. The Tatmadaw has dismissed the results as fraudulent.

As the military began devolving some power over the past decade, Myanmar experienced one of the most profound and rapid societal changes in the world. A country that had been cut off from the world by the generals, who first seized power in a 1962 coup, went on Facebook and discovered memes, emojis and global conversations about gender politics.

“Even though these are dark days and my heart breaks with all these images of bloodshed, I’m more optimistic because I see women on the street,” said Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd, a Burmese-American who served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and is now a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. “In this contest, I will put money on the women. They are unarmed, but they are the true warriors.”

That passion has ignited across the country, despite Tatmadaw crackdowns in past decades that have killed hundreds of people.

“Women took the frontier position in the fight against dictatorship because we believe it is our cause,” said Ma Ei Thinzar Maung, a 27-year-old politician and former political prisoner who, along with another woman the same age, led the first anti-coup demonstration in Yangon five days after the putsch.

That passion has ignited across the country, despite Tatmadaw crackdowns in past decades that have killed hundreds of people.

“That was the time I committed myself to working toward abolishing the military junta,” she said. “Minorities know what it feels like, where discrimination leads. And as a woman, we are still considered as a second sex.”

“That must be one of the reasons why women activists seem more committed to rights issues,” she added.

While the National League for Democracy is led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, its top ranks are dominated by men. And like the Tatmadaw, the party’s highest echelons have tended to be reserved for members of the country’s ethnic Bamar majority.

On the streets of Myanmar, even as the security forces continue to fire at unarmed protesters, the makeup of the movement has been far more diverse. There are Muslim students, Catholic nuns, Buddhist monks, drag queens and a legion of young women.

“Gen Z are a fearless generation,” said Honey Aung, whose younger sister, Kyawt Nandar Aung, was killed by a bullet to the head on Wednesday in the city of Monywa. “My sister joined the protests every day. She hated dictatorship.”

In a speech that ran in a state propaganda publication earlier this week, General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief, sniffed at the impropriety of the protesters, with their “indecent clothes contrary to Myanmar culture.” His definition is commonly considered to include women wearing trousers.

Moments before she was shot dead, Ms. Kyal Sin, dressed in sneakers and torn jeans, rallied her fellow peaceful protesters.

As they staggered from the tear gas fired by security forces on Wednesday, Ms. Kyal Sin dispensed water to cleanse their eyes. “We are not going to run,” she yelled, in a video recorded by another protester. “Our people’s blood should not reach the ground.”

“She is the bravest girl I have ever seen in my life,” said Ko Lu Maw, who photographed some of the final images of Ms. Kyal Sin, in an alert, proud pose amid a crowd of prostrate protesters.

Under her T-shirt, Ms. Kyal Sin wore a star-shaped pendant because her name means “pure star” in Burmese.

“She would say, ‘if you see a star, remember, that’s me,’” said Ms. Cho Nwe Oo, her friend. “I will always remember her proudly.”

#tw murder #state sponsored violence #Myanmar #activism

65 notes · View notes

littlesystems · 5 years

Text

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King's It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a trans man? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the trans men who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

#the discourse

49K notes · View notes

nefariouscryptid · 3 years

Note

here's a fun one: dare you to do the entirety of that list with a character of your choice >:3c

Gotta do it with my boy Peter!

1. What is one word to shut them up?

Murray

2. What is the thing they feel the most guilty about?

He’s not torn up about it or anything but he feels bad about what happened to Mary, or what could of happened to her.

3. What is the worst pain they’ve ever experienced?

Getting your face and eye slashed open is pretty painful.

4. Describe their worst nightmare.

With his job being kidnapped and tortured is pretty plausible. He thinks about that one a lot.

5. List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.

Surface: the ocean

Repressed: being taken advantage of without his knowing. Reminds him of his childhood.

Deep Dark: losing Jason in any form. He’s be a broken man left to his own devices, and his own safety would be completely compromised.

6. What is something that never fails to make them feel sick?

Gunshot wounds and deep cuts. He cringes at those.

7. What feature (physical or otherwise) do they hate most about themselves?

Physically he’s not a big fan of the scars he has or his general face structure but it’s not enough to keep him up at night. Mentally he doesn’t like how he gets when triggered and how easily it is to trigger him.

8. Do they have anything that triggers them?

Certain physical sensations but mainly what others do to him, such as rubbing their thumb on his hand, whispering behind him into his ear, stroking his hair while he’s standing, and certain phrases. If a woman talks seductively to him it’s easy for him to get triggered, but when men do it it’s a lot less frequent unless certain phrases are said. Country music is a big no go but he can listen to old country.

9. What is their greatest physical weakness?

He’s half blind and slowly going blind in the other eye

10. What is their greatest mental weakness?

How willing he is to throw everything away for someone (his Jason) and his apathy after the accident makes him blind to potential dangers.

11. Do they have any vices?

Smokes a lot of weed, used to be a heavy drinker but quit, did a lot of coke and before Durante starts he had just managed to escape a meth addiction.

12. Have they ever done something illegal? What was it?

His whole life is illegal. His worst crime would have to be aiding in terrorism

13. Which of the 7 Deadly Sins best describes them?

Greed and lust

14. Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?

Yes but he’s quick to calm himself down, and Jason can calm him near instantly.

15. Who do they hate the most?

Kind of hard to say, he hates a lot of people. He hates his parents but he’s since moved on as much as one could from them, he hates Anahii but he finds ways to tolerate her existence, and he hates Ivan for what he did to him but his breakdown made it impossible for him to really plan any retaliation other then killing his wife.

16. Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior?

Not that I can think of

17. What sound always gives them a headache?

Women’s voices lol. Mainly naggy ones.

18. Is there a certain flavor that disgusts them?

Hates bitterness

19. Do they consider themselves ugly?

Honestly yes, sees himself as a butterface.

20. Do they consider themselves unloveable?

Yes but it’s manifested and internalized more subtly and masked.

21. What is something that causes them great anxiety?

Broken glass and lack of contact with people he needs to be with.

22. Do they have any mental illnesses?

I’m not going to diagnose him specifically with anything. But short answer yes a lot.

23. Have they ever been assaulted/abused/raped?

Raped multiple times by his mom as a child, beaten by his dad, and you could call his and Anahiis marriage abusive.

24. Do they fear the possibility of being assaulted/abused/raped?

He feels he can defend himself better and stay out of situations where that would happen but it’s in the back of his head.

25. Have they ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust?

His parents

26. Have they ever been seriously injured?

Other then his face he has been shot before in the chest.

27. How many times have they been in the hospital?

About 7 times not including doctor visits after an injury (checkups)

28. Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them?

There isn’t really any person that disgusts him on a moral aspect. There’s people that he thinks are absolutely retarded and blind, but no one really makes him recoil.

29. Does what they cannot see scare them?

No, he pretty much knows it all

30. Have they ever been bullied?

Yes a lot in his school years.

31. Do they have self-confidence or self-image issues?

Yes but it doesn’t stop him from putting on a facade. Like I said early, it manifests differently.

32. Do they have a bad relationship with their parents?

He wishes he killed them.

33. Have they ever been in a relationship that didn’t work out so well?

Anahii lol

34. Have they ever self harmed?

Yes

35. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be?

If he can’t change the whole lot he won’t change any.

36. Are they in control of their emotions, or are their emotions in control of them?

He’s in control of his emotions for the most part.

37. Have they ever had their freedom taken away?

Sort of. He’s been in many holding cells and was in jail at one point.

38. Have they ever been imprisoned?

Yes

39. Have they ever been accused of something they didn’t do?

Many times but he’s been able to prove his innocence

40. Do they often blame themselves for other people’s problems?

Depends on the situation. He won’t blame himself he the problem can’t be directly linked to him.

41. Do they get sick often?

He gets eye infections sometimes but not much.

42. Are they comfortable with where they are in life?

Fuck no lol but least he’s well off financially

43. Do they wish that they could change their pasts?

Doesn’t do him good to do so, so no

44. What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?

Take a break. He’s love to run away from his life with Jason but he knows they’re both too greedy to do so, even without being trapped.

45. What is the emotion they most commonly experience?

I would say apathy but it’s hard to explain. Other then that, yearning.

46. Have they ever contemplated suicide?

He’s attempted a few times in his life.

47. Have they ever gone so far as to attempt suicide?

Yes

48. Is there anyone that they would willingly kill?

His parents, Ivan if his job allowed it, Anahii if he’d have a chance, literally anyone Jason dates, whoever took Mary

49. If [name] was put into ______ situation, they’d rather die than live to see it through.

If Peter had to see Jason die, get tortured, have to kill him, or any other variation.

50. Create your own!

Would history repeat itself if he had children?

He’s observant and understands himself enough to see the patterns of his parents in him. Since he would love his children deeply he would be able to stop himself from being like his parents towards them, but he wouldn’t be perfect.

#alex banters #asks #chad tag #peter durante #my ocs #ask meme

4 notes · View notes

dark-and-twisty-01 · 5 years

Text

Chicago Rippers

It was a case with all the grisly melodrama of a Hollywood production. A serial slayer, predictably dubbed "Jack the Ripper" by newsmen, was stalking young women in Chicago and environs, discarding their mutilated corpses like cast-off rubbish. Homicide detectives had no inkling of the killer's motive or identity; they couldn't even manage to agree upon a final body count. The speculation published daily in Chicago's press was bad enough; the truth, when finally exposed, was infinitely worse.

On May 23, 1981, 28-year-old Linda Sutton was abducted by persons unknown from Elmhurst, a Chicago suburb. Ten days later, her mutilated body, the left breast missing was recovered from a field in Villa Park, adjacent to the Rip Van Winkle Motel. The Evidence suggested Sutton had been kidnapped by a sadist, but police had no solid clues to his identity.

A year passed before the next acknowledged victim in the series disappeared. On May 15, 1982, 21-year-old Lorraine Borowski was scheduled to open the Elmhurst realtor' office where she worked. Employees turning up for work that morning found the office locked, Boroski's shoes and scattered contents from her handbag syrewn outside the door. Police were called at once, but five months elapsed before Borowski's corpse was found, on October 10, in a cemetery south of Villa Park. Advanced decomposition left the cause of death a mystery.

Two weeks later, on May 29, Shui Mak was reported missing from Hanover Park, in Cook Country, her mutilated body recovered at Barrington on September 30. On June 13, prostitute Angel York was picked up by a "john" in a van, handcuffed, her breast slashed open before she was dumped alive on the roadside. Descriptions of her attacker had taken police nowhere by August 28, when teenage hooker Sandra Delaware was found stabbed and strangled to death on the bank of the Chicago River, her left breast neatly amputated. Rose Davis, age 30, was in identical condition when police found her corpse in a Chicago alley on September 8. Three days later, 42-year-old Carole Pappas, wife of Chicago Cubs pitcher, vanished without a trace from a department store in nearby Wheaton, Illinois.

Detectives got the break they had been waiting for on October 6. That morning, prostitute Beverly Wasgington, age 20, was found nude and savaged beside a Chicago railroad track. Her left breast was nearly severed the right deeply slahed, but she was breathing, and emergency surgery saved her life. Hours later, in a seemingly unrelated incident, drug dealer Rafael Torado was killed, and a male companion wounded when the occupants of a cruising van peppered a street corner phone booth with gunfire.

Two weeks later, on October 20, police arrested unemployed carpenter Robin Gecht, a 28-year-old former employee of contractor John Gacy, and charged him with cruel assault on Beverly Washington. Also suspected of slashing prostitute Cynthia Smith before she escaped from his van, Gecht was an odd character, once accused of molesting his own younger sister. Authorities immediately linked him to the "Ripper" slayings, but they had no proof, and he made bail on October 26.

Meanwhile, detectives had learned that Gecht was one of four men who had rented adjining rooms at Villa Park's Rip Van Winkle Motel several months before Linda Sutton was murdered nearby. The manager remembered them as party animals, frequently bringing women to their rooms, and he surprised investigators with one further bit of information. The men had been "some kind of cultists," perhaps devil worshipers.

Two of the Rip Van Winkle tenants, brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis, had left a forewarding address for any mail they might receive. Police found 23-year-old Thomas at home when they called, and his inconsistent answers earned him a trip downtown. The suspect promptly failed a polygraph examination, cracking under stiff interrogation to describe the "satanic chapel" in Gecht's upstairs bedroom, wherepicks, gang-raped, and finally sacrificed to Satan by members of a tiny cult including Gecht, the Kokoraleis brother, and 23-year-old Edward Spreitzer. As described by the prisioner, cultic rituals included severing one or both breasts with a thin wire garrote, each celebrant "taking communion" by eating a piece before the relic was consigned to Gecht's trophy box. At one point, Kokoraleis told detectives, he had counted 15 breasts inside the box. Some other victims had been murdered at the Rip Van Winkle, out in Villa Park. He picked a snapshot of Lorraine Borowski as a woman he had picked up, with his brother, for a one-way ride to the motel.

Police had heard enough. Armed with search and arrest warrants, they swept up Robin Gecht, Ed Spreitzer, and 20-year-old Andrew Kokoraleis on November 5, lodging them in jail under $1 million bond. A search of Gecht's apartment revealed the satanic chapel descried by Tom Kokoraleis, and lawmen came away with a rifle matched to the recent Torado shooting. Satanic literature was also retreived from the apartment occupied by Andrew Kokoraleis. With their suspects in custody, authorities speculated that the gang might have murdered 18 women in as many months.

Tom Kokoraleis was charged with the slayingof Linda Biriwski on November 12 and formally indicted by a grand jury two days later. Brother Andrew and Edward Spreitzer were charged on November 14 with the rape and murder of victim Rose Davis. When the mangled body of 22-year-old Susan Baker was found on November 16 at a site where previous victims had been discarded, police worried that other cult members might still be at large. No charges were filed in that case, however, and authorities now connect Baker's death to her background of drug and prostitution arrests in several states.

Facing multiple charges of rape, attempted murder, and aggravated battery, Robin Gecht was found mentally competent for trial on March 2, 1983. His trial opened on September 20, and Gecht took the witness stand next day, confessing the attack on Beverly Washington. Convicted on all counts, he revieved a sentence of 120 years in prison.

Tom Kokoraleis had suffered a change of heart since confessing to murder, attorneys seeking to block the reading of his statements at forthcoming trials, but on December 4, 1983, the confessions were admitted as evidence. Four months later, on April 2, 1984, Ed Spreitzer pled guilty on four counts of murder, including victims Davis, Delaware, Mak and Torado. Sentenced to life on each count, he received additional time on conviction for charges of rape, deviant sexual assualt, and attempted murder.

On February 6, 1985, a statement from Andrew Kokoraleis was read to jury in his trial for the Rose Davis murder. In his confession, the defendant admitted he was "cruising" with fellow cultists Gecht and Spreitzer when they kidnapped Davis, with Andrew stabbing her several times in the process. Convicted on February 11, he recieved a death sentence on March 18, 1985. Kokoraleis was executed by lethal injection on March 16, 1999.

On March 4, 1986, Edward Spreitzer was convicted of murdering Linda Sutton and formally sentenced to death on March 20. Authorities declared that Spreitzer had agreed to testify against Gecht in that case, but no further charges have been filed to date in Chicago's grim series of cannibal murders.

#Chicago Rippers #Robin Gecht #Andrew Kokoraleis #Edward Spreitzer #tcc community #tcc blogger #tcc #true crime community #true crime blog #true crimes #true crime #tcc real crime #real crime blog #real crimes #real crime #tcc blog #ripper murders

48 notes · View notes

crimemind · 4 years

Text

Pervis Tyrone Payne

You can listen to the United States of Crime episode (#2) about this case here.

TW: MURDER, MURDER OF CHILDREN, DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT/RAPE

The Death Penalty has been utilized as a form of punishment since man had a moral code. But today, only 53 countries offer the death penalty as a sentencing option for those convicted of a crime. The majority of countries in the world have either abolished the death penalty entirely or have made it available only in extreme cases. Belarus is the only holdout in Europe and most of the counties making up northeast Africa and the middle east retain the death penalty as a method of punishment. Guatemala, Guyana, and Cuba still practice capital punishment in Central and South America. Many Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand keep the death penalty as an option but only enforce it in rare cases or for specific crimes. America is one of only five first world nations, alongside Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, to still actively sentence people to death. The United States stands alone as the only western country to still execute people. Japan only allows the execution of people convicted of murder and especially brutal crimes and the only method of execution is by hanging. India and South Korea also only executed prisoners by hanging. Mainland China offers two methods of execution, death by firing squad or lethal injection. Taiwan executes prisoners using a single handgun aimed at the prisoner’s heart or their brain stem under the ear if they consent to organ donation. Currently, Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Peru only exercise the death penalty in extreme cases. The current methods of execution used worldwide include beheading, electrocution, hanging, shooting, and lethal injection.

In 2019, 22 people, all male, were executed in the United States. An additional 34 people were sentenced to death last year and the total number of people on death row across the country is estimated at 2,656. In America, 30 states still have the death penalty and 20 have either abolished it or put a moratorium on capital punishment. On March 23rd, 2020 as I was writing this episode Colorado, which had put a moratorium on capital punishment, voted to abolish the death penalty.

The morality of the death penalty has been a polarizing issue for Americans for decades. The 1972 Supreme Court decision in Furman v. George ruled the death penalty as it was practiced at that time unconstitutional. This decision was based on the inconsistencies in sentencing at the time because defendants who were convicted very different crimes ranging in severity were given death sentences. However, the Supreme Court left it open for States to impose their own death penalties as long as clear standards were provided. In the four years following the Furman ruling, 35 states enacted their own capital punishment laws. Two main types of death penalty laws were written, the first stated clearly which crimes could be punishable by death and how variables in a case should be weighed. These variables include mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances. Mitigating factors explain and/or offer an explanation for the crime while aggravating factors reveal the aspects of the crime that are extraordinary and call for a harsher sentence. The second kind of death penalty law that was enacted made capital punishment mandatory for certain so-called capital crimes.

In 1976 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Gregg v. Georgia and upheld the first type of death penalty laws which take into account mitigating and aggravating factors. The ruling struck down the mandatory death penalty laws on the grounds that they were “unduly harsh and rigid”. Executions, which had completely ceased in 1972, resumed in 1977. 50 executions took place between 1977 and 1985 as the Supreme Court heard the case of McCleskey v. Kemp, which dealt with how capital punishment had been utilized in the state of Georgia. The case was based on a study conducted by University of Iowa professor David Baldus who found that African American defendants who were charged with killing white people were given a death sentence seven times as often as white people who had been tried for killing African Americans. The Supreme Court ruled that while there was statistical evidence of racial discrimination, this was not enough to repeal the law. This ruling was based on the finding that the state itself had not encouraged racial discrimination in its courts.

In 2002 the Supreme court ruled on the case of Atkins v. Virginia and found that the execution of people with intellectual disabilities violated the 8th amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. In 2005 the case of Roper v. Simmons was decided by the Supreme Court. This landmark case made it illegal to execute people who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes. Crimes that do not result in death are now not death penalty eligible crimes.

This topic is one that I’m deeply interested in and fascinated by and in posts to follow I will discuss other aspects of the Death Penalty in America, such as execution methods and their flaws, the elderly on death row, the appeals process, and the cost of upholding the death penalty. But today’s case relates to the Atkins v. Virginia ruling and the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities or limitations.

The case we’ll be talking about today is that of Pervis Tyrone Payne. In 1987, Payne, an African American man, was 20-years-old and living in Shelby County, Tennessee. Payne was dating a woman named Bobbie Thomas of Millington, TN and on the morning of Saturday, June 27th, Payne went to Thomas’ apartment at the Hiwasse Apartment complex to wait for her. She had been out of town on a trip and was expected to arrive home that night and the two had plans to spend the weekend together. He brought an overnight bag with three cans of Colt 45 malt liquor with him and left this bag at the door of the apartment. According to the version of events presented later at trial, Payne stayed around the apartment complex for most of the day and spent his time injecting Cocaine and drinking beer. He left the apartment sometime during the day to ride in his friend’s car with him. The two men took turns driving so that while the one in the passenger seat could read a pornographic magazine.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, Payne returned to Thomas’ apartment complex but Thomas was still not home. Across the hall from Thomas lived Charisse Christopher and her two children, 3-year-old Nicholas and 2-year-old Lacie. It is unclear how well Payne knew Christopher from spending time at Thomas’ apartment, it is believed that they had possibly seen one another in passing. Regardless Payne entered the apartment of Charisse Christopher without permission. When Christopher saw Payne in her home she began screaming at him to get out. The apartment complex’s resident manager lived in the unit directly below Christopher’s and heard her screams. She reported hearing a “blood-curdling scream” come from the apartment and called the police. In between making the call and when the police arrived, the manager reported that the screaming had stopped and she had heard someone using the sink in the bathroom of the upstairs unit. Mere minutes after the police were called, the first officer arrived at the scene.

Payne was observed exiting Christopher’s apartment while carrying his shoes, he then picked up his overnight bag, and descended the stairs. The officer approached him at the bottom of the steps and noticed that he was covered in blood the officer later stated: “It looked like he was sweating blood”. The officer stopped Payne and asked him who he was, Payne responded “I’m the complainant”, which doesn’t make any sense. Payne was then asked what was going on upstairs and proceeded to hit the officer with the overnight bag. Payne dropped his shoes and began running away from the apartment building to another one. The officer attempted to catch up with Payne but could not before he disappeared.

Additional officers had arrived on the scene at this point. They entered Christopher’s apartment and found Charisse Christopher Laci, and Nicholas on the kitchen floor. 3-year-old Nicholas had been stabbed multiple times completely through his abdomen but was still breathing. Laci and Charisse were deceased. Charisse had been stabbed an excessive number of times with a butcher’s knife in her abdomen, back, and head. There does not seem to be a consensus on how many times she was stabbed, I found sourced that stated it was 9 times, 42 times, and 84 times. Regardless, it appeared that the fatal injury was a cut through her aorta. She was found lying on her back with her shorts pushed up on her body and a used tampon had been placed next to her. The butcher knife was lying at her feet and her hand and forearm had been stuck through the adjustment strap at the back of Payne’s baseball cap. 2-year-old Laci was found deceased next to her mother, having bled out before help arrived.

Inside of the apartment Police recovered the three cans of Colt 45 malt liquor, which had Payne’s fingerprints on them. Another empty beer can was found outside of the apartment. Additionally, Payne’s fingerprints were found on the telephone and the kitchen counter of Christopher’s apartment. Investigators had the officer’s description of Payne and the search for him began immediately. He was found later the same day in the attic of an ex-girlfriend’s house. As he was escorted out of the house, Payne told the police “Man, I ain’t killed no woman”. Officers noted that Payme had a “wild look about him. His pupils were contracted. He was foaming at the mouth, saliva. He appeared to be very nervous. He was breathing real rapid.” When Payne was taken into custody, he was still wearing blood-soaked clothing and had multiple scratch marks across his chest. His watch also had blood stains on it and in his pockets police found a packet with Cocaine residue, the wrapper from a hypodermic syringe, and the cap of a hypodermic syringe. He had ditched his overnight bag in a nearby dumpster and it was later found with a bloody white shirt inside.

Pervis Payne was charged for the murders of 28-year-old Charisse and 2-year-old Laci Jo. 3-year-old Nicholas survived the attack. Payne was prosecuted for two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. The trial began in 1988 and several neighbors testified as to what they experienced on July 27th, 1987. Multiple people heard Chairsse’s screams and heard someone frantically trying to close the back door to the yard shared by residents. One woman testified that she had seen the hand of someone whom she perceived to be an African American man reach over the yard fence. Below the hand at the wrist was a gold watch, similar in description to the one Payne was wearing when he was apprehended.

The medical examiner testified as to the state of Charisse and Laci’s bodies. He told the court that Charisse was menstruating at the time of her death, hence the used tampon found near her body. He swabbed her vagina and there was acid phosphatase present, which indicated the presence of sperm, but ultimately no sperm was recovered. Acid Phosphatase is found where high concentrations of seminal fluid recently were. Because there was no sperm found in the body, this enzyme could have been left by pre-ejaculate.

Payne took the stand at his own trial, which is extremely rare in murder cases. There are many reasons why Defendants do not testify in murder trials. Most are advised not to by their counsel to avoid self-incrimination, protect from the brutality of cross-examination, and to deprive the prosecution of the opportunity to make the defendant look bad. Payne told the court that he did not hurt any member of the Christopher family. He claimed that another man had pushed by him when he was walking up the stairs and that man had burst into Charisse Christopher’s apartment. He said that he had heard a baby crying and Charisse calling for help. According to Payne, he found the door open and called to Charisse before entering. He described the scene as follows:

“I saw the worst thing I ever saw in my life and like my breath just had--had tooken--just took out of me. . . . she was looking at me. She had the knife in her throat with her hand on the knife like she had been trying to get it out and her mouth was just moving but words had faded away. And I didn’t know what to do”

Payne explained that his clothing had been stained when he tried to remove the butcher knife from Charisse’s neck. He claimed that Charisse was still alive and reached out to him and grabbed his shirt. This unnerved Payne and he fled the apartment when he heard police sirens approaching.

Payne was them cross-examined by the prosecution. He was questioned as to why the left leg of his pants had bloodstains on it. During the exchange, Payne said that Charisse’s blood got on his pants when she “hit the wall”. He asserted that she had grabbed his arms and he recoiled, at which point she fell backward onto the wall and the floor. Payne was asked four times if the blood got on his leg when Charisse fell back into the pool of blood as he had claimed. On the fourth reiteration of the question, Payne changed his answer. He was asked by the prosecuting attorney “Is that what you said, sir, that she got blood on your when she hit the wall?”. Payne then, for the first time, did not affirm that this is what he said. He responded, “I didn’t say she got blood on me when she hit the wall”. The attorney asked if he had not just said the opposite and he responses that he had not said that blood had gotten on him when Charisse “hit the wall”.

This piece of the cross-examination stands out to me. The fact that Payne said the same thing more than four times and then suddenly denied that he had said it is not normal, even if a defendant is lying. It shows that there is some confusion or lack of understanding on Payne’s part.

Payne was ultimately found guilty of all charges. He was eligible for the death penalty. Before sentencing, mitigating and aggravating factors were presented to the court. Payne’s girlfriend, Bobby Thomas, testified that Payne went to church wither her often, which in itself doesn’t really speak to someone’s character, just their belief system. She also told the court that her three children loved Payne and that he was a great father figure to them. She knew him as a caring person that did not use drugs or drink and would never hurt someone.

Payne’s parents also testified. They explained that he had no criminal record whatsoever and had never been arrested. Like Thomas, they testified that Payne did not use drugs or alcohol. He had been a hard worker and assisted his father, who was a painter. They described him as a good son and an exemplary father figure for Thomas’ children.

A clinical psychologist also testified during the sentencing phase. The psychologist had administered an IQ test to Payne. The results showed that Payne’s verbal IQ was 78 and his performance IQ was 82. Generally, the IQ threshold for a diagnosis of intellectual disability commonly referred to as mental retardation is a score of 75. Because of this, Payne was considered by the psychologist to be “mentally handicapped”. He noted that Payne was the most polite prisoner he had ever interviewed.

Along with the aggravating factors of the case, Charisse Christopher’s mother testified to the distress and hardship her daughter and granddaughter’s murders had imposed on her. She told the court that Nicholas, Charisse’s surviving son, still cried for his mother and sister even a year later. Nicholas experienced severe physical and mental trauma from the attack. Payne was sentenced to death for both murder counts and an additional 30 years for the attempted murder of Nicholas.

Payne appealed his sentence to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Payne’s legal team filed the appeal on several grounds. They asserted that the victim impact statement given by Charisse’s mother emotionally influenced the jury against him, thus violating his 8th amendment right of protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The court ruled against Payne and affirmed both of the death sentences. In 1991, Payne appealed his case to the Supreme Court. The question at hand was whether the 8th amendment prohibits the jury in a capital case from considering the impact of the crime of the surviving family members. In a 6 to 3 decision, the court ruled against Payne. This decision effectively overruled the decision in the 1987 case of Booth v Maryland, which had established that such emotional testimony did infringe on a defendant’s 8th amendment rights.

Pervis Tyrone Payne never admitted to the murders and maintains his innocence. He has been living on Death Row in Tennessee ever since, having exhausted all of his appeals. He twice had execution dates set, both in 2007 and before each date arrived he received a stay of execution. In September of 2019, the state of Tennessee filed a motion to set the execution date for Payne for December 3rd, 2020. His legal team filed a 120-page response to the state’s motion to set an execution date in December of 2019. Supervisory Assistant for the Federal Public Defender Kelley J. Henry and Assistance Chief of the Capital Habeas Unit Amy D. Harwell allege that Pervis Payne is “indisputably intellectually disabled” and in adherence to Atkins v. Virginia, his execution would be illegal. In 2019, Payne’s IQ was retested by Dr. Daniel Martell and it was found to be only 72. Dr. Martell identified neurocognitive impairments and adaptive behavior deficits in Payne that had been documented at the age onset.

Dr. Martell explained that a factor at play in this case in something known as the Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect states, in layman’s terms, that a person’s IQ score increased over time. This effect has been noted in the United States and similar countries and it is believed that the average rate of 0.3 IQ points per year. Not only is the Flynn Effect fascinating, but it also exemplifies the failings of using IQ tests when deciding who is eligible for the death penalty. Because of the Flynn Effect, a person could be considered mentally unfit for execution and then years later become fit for execution. Also, to be able to accurately measure current IQ scores against past scores, a reduction of 0.3 points per year between tests is required. The Atkins decision gives states discretion in how they define intellectual disability as a matter of law. Most states use IQ-based definitions, but do not adjust for the Flynn Effect. The inconsistent definitions and thresholds to determine intellectual disability are cause for concern when talking about the decision to execute someone or to sentence them to life in prison.

According to Dr. Martell, Payne’s functional IQ, taking the Flynn Effect into account, is 68.4, well under the standard of 75 points as a determination of mental fitness. Dr. Reschly, an expert in Intellectual Disability, also evaluated Payne and reported a full-scale IQ of 74, before adjustment for the Flynn Effect. This score puts Payne into the intellectually disabled category according to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. According to documents and testimony from his family members, Payne had a long history of developmental delays. In school, he was known to teachers and fellow classmates as “slow” and he was unable to graduate high school and failed the Tennessee Proficiency Exam five times before dropping out. For reference, an average 9th-grade student would pass this exam on the first try, Payne took the exam every year starting in 9th grade for five years. When Payne was in the 9th grade, he was unable to complete writing assignments and his teachers had stopped grading him based on his ability to reach the required level of comprehension based on his grade and instead graded him for his effort in class. According to one teacher, Martha Faye, “Pervis was slow and had low comprehension...He didn’t read well enough to understand the material on his own, and even when the material was explained to him, he had to be told over and over what to do. He couldn’t retain instructions or information from one day to the next”.

Family members also noticed Payne’s deficits. Rolanda, Payne’s younger sister by 7 years, claims that Payne couldn’t help her with her homework as a kid. His family was aware of his inability to comprehend anything more complicated than simple, short instructions and his mother did not allow him to iron or wash clothing because he could never complete a task without destroying something. Despite this, his parents never demanded that he do better in school and accepted his limitations. In his teen years, Payne worked at Pizza Hut and his supervisor described him as “mentally challenged”. He always had to refer to instruction sheets that were posted at all work stations long after he had finished training and had been working there for a while.

When Payne went to work for his father, Carl Payne, the patriarch understood that instructions had to be repeated several times to make sure that Payne understood them. He was unable to follow instructions with too many steps. Carl Payne reports that as a child Payne was delayed in learning to walk and talk. He could not feed himself until he was 5 years old and he was also plagued by a stutter until early adulthood. His mother believed that Payne’s difficulties were because he was born prematurely. After dropping out of high school, Payne still could not count money, add up the cost of items, use a tape measure, read aloud, or identify street names and follow maps.

Payne’s attorneys also allege that there is a strong chance that Payne did not commit the crimes. The document by Henry and Harwell includes Payne’s version of events. He claims that he was going up to his girlfriend’s apartment and heard a noise come from Charisse’s unit. He went inside to help whoever was crying out and was so overwhelmed by the gruesome scene that he panicked and fled the apartment. These actions would be more aligned with Payne’s history of mental deficiency, his reported lack of violence and drug use, and his reputation as a kind and gentle person. The motive for the crime as put forth by the prosecution was Payne’s desire to sexually assault Christopher, a woman whom he did not know.

The story about Payne using cocaine and drinking beer before the murders is also unsubstantiated. Payne was not drug tested when he was apprehended, despite his mother’s request that he be tested. The defense also alleges that the tampon was recovered two days after the murders and does not appear in any of the crime scene photographs. Payne’s injuries, mainly the scratches, were not consistent with a violent struggle and the blood on his clothing matched his description of events.

The acid phosphatase also could not be linked definitively to Payne. According to the defense, the original prosecution did not present testimony from Darryl Shanks, Charisse’s boyfriends at the time. Shanks told investigators that he and Charisse had consensual sex just hours before her murder. After the trial during a post-conviction hearing, Shanks recanted his affidavit. Payne’s counsel claims that they were never made aware of Shanks’ interview or this potentially critical evidence. As a side note, this seems like a Brady violation to me. For those who may not know a Brady Violation occurs when a piece of evidence that could be exculpatory is willfully or negligently hidden from the defense by the prosecution. This affidavit from Shanks would have cast substantial doubt on the prosecution theory of motive, which could have swayed the jury’s decision.

One of the more egregious pieces of possible prosecutorial misconduct is the alleged suppression of blood and semen evidence. Henry and Harwell discovered residue evidence that had not been introduced at Payne’s first trial. They attempted to obtain this evidence but the Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk’s staff refused to give it to them without a court order. According to Henry and Harwell, they had never been outright denied evidence while working on a case before. An Emergency Motion to be Permitted to View Evidence was granted on December 20th, 2019 and that day Payne’s counsel examined the evidence in Memphis, TN. Among the pieces of evidence was a comforter with bloodstains, bloody sheets, and one bloody pillow. These pieces of evidence are in contrast to the prosecution’s assertion that the kitchen of Christopher’s apartment was the only area considered a crime scene. The victim’s tampon was also kept as evidence and may have traces of sperm that could be tested for DNA. According to Tennessee Code 40-30-304(2), If evidence is still in existence and in good enough condition to be tested, the court shall order DNA analysis. In 2006, Payne had filed a Petition for Post-Conviction DNA analysis, which was denied.

Now that we’ve gone over the contrasting evidence and the mitigating factors laid out by the defense, let’s talk about alternative suspects. At the time of her death, Charisse Christopher was divorced from her husband, Kenneth Christopher. It is well documented that Mr. Christopher was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive toward Charisse during their marriage. Charisse eventually fled the couple’s home and moved to her hometown of Millington where she filed for divorce. In the divorce complaint, Charisse cited cruel and inhumane treatment, abandonment, and neglect as grounds for the divorce. Mr. Christopher had a long and violent criminal history predating the marriage and continuing on after it had ended. Mr. Christopher had no less than 9 DUI charges and he had been escorted by police from his mother’s home due to his drunkenness after she called for help.

At first, investigators ruled Mr. Christopher out because he was serving the last year of the five year prison sentence for aggravated assault. He was housed at the Fort Pillow State Penitentiary, which was renamed the Cold Creek Correctional Facility in Lauderdale County, TN. However, Mr. Christopher was allowed to leave the premises on weekends if they were considered minimum security. Mr. Christopher could have left the prison on the morning of the murder, which was a Saturday, committed the crime, and return to the prison without repercussion or much notice. According to the filing, Mr. Christopher was aware that Charisse was in a new relationship and knew where she lived.

Pervis Payne also maintains that a man was already inside of Charisse Christopher’s apartment before he entered. He described the man as a black guy with a long white or beige tropical shirt that was covered in blood. He said that he observed the man jump from the landing on the second floor to the steps before running past Payne. Payne claims that the unknown man dropped coins and items while fleeing and that he picked them up and put them in his pocket, hence the drug paraphernalia later found on him. He told officers about this man in the tropical shirt while being transported to police headquarters. A neighbor, John Edward Williams, came forward in 1992 and said that he had seen Payne walking to the apartment building as another African American man rushed out of the building, got in a car, and drove away. Minutes later, Williams saw Payne running from the upstairs unit. According to Williams, the same black man he had seen run past Payne had been to Christopher’s apartment several times before and had observed Christopher and the man arguing.

Williams and a man named Leroy Jones gave affidavits which included their knowledge of Charisse Christopher’s use of illegal drugs. Now, this information is absolutely not to diminish the extreme tragedy of Charisse and Laci’s deaths or to paint Charisse in a negative light. It is being mentioned to create a clearer picture of the situation and one of the possible theories presented by the defense. Jones was involved in drug trafficking in the area and knew that his brother, Charles Jones, had enlisted Christopher to sell drugs for him. According to Leroy Jones, Charles Jones had told an associate name William Hall to “take care of the Christopher woman”. This conversation took place one week before the murders. Williams, Jones, and Kenneth Christopher all admitted to having used drugs with Charisse Christopher in the past, specifically amphetamines. Methamphetamine and amphetamine were present in Christopher’s blood at the time of her death according to the toxicology report. The theory alluded to in Payne’s defense filing is that Charisse Christopher was murdered by William Hall on the orders of Charles Jones to silence her or enact some form of revenge.

Henry and Harwell site five similar cases in which defendants were wrongfully convicted of murder after stumbling upon the crime scene. Those defendants, Chad Heins and Clemente Aguirre of Florida, John Nolley and Darryl Adams of Texas, and David Ayers of Ohio, have been exonerated. We don’t have time to discuss this extremely heavy topic on this episode but I want to note that the response by Henry and Harwell also includes a section entitled, The Death Penalty is Racist which details how capital punishment had been used to systematically oppress African Americans in Tennessee for centuries. The section begins on page 64 and I have included the link to the entire response in case anyone wants to read it.

Despite this, in my opinion, extremely well-crafted response in opposition to the motion to set an execution date, the state of Tennessee’s motion to set the date was granted on February 24th, 2020. Currently, there are no attempts to save Pervis Tyrone Payne’s life in motion. This case has evolved so much since Payne’s initial trial in 1988 and the work of Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell has completely changed my view of this situation. I’m sure many of you, like me, heard the initial version of events and thought “well it sounds pretty obvious that he did it”. When I was researching this case I thought that this episode was going to be about the issue of executing a likely intellectually disabled, but 100% guilty person because of a flawed measurement of mental functioning. But this case is about those measurements AND about the impending execution of a man who I, personally, could not in good conscience say is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The accounts from Payne’s teachers, classmates, and family members support the conclusion that his intellectual functioning is impaired, which would render his sentence of death unconstitutional under the Atkins ruling. Payne was always a nonviolent, caring, and person as his girlfriend and family members testified to. People with intellectual disabilities do not randomly attack a mother and two small children in this manner. The crime was extremely brutal and I have a hard time believing that Payne simply decided to sexually assault and then murder a woman he did not know while waiting for his girlfriend to come home.

Murderers most often have a criminal history of violence before they commit a homicide. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, around 70% of people convicted of murder have previous arrests and/or convictions. Payne did not have any criminal history whatsoever, nor did he have a history of violence. Furthermore, people with intellectual disabilities, like Payne, are much more likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators. According to a study conducted by Lovell and Skellern, people with mental disabilities in a clinical setting tend to react violently when they are confronted with communication difficulties, frustration, and emotional distress.

Many patients who acted out had a history of impulsive and unpredictable behavior. Generally, violent reactions were more strongly associated with disorders including ADHD, Dementia, and Bipolar disorder. People with mild intellectual disability were found to be more deliberate in their verbal and physical assaults, whereas people with moderate or severe intellectual disability were likely to lash out indiscriminately due to circumstantial stressors. Because of Payne’s specific intellectual disability and his lack of a criminal record, the likelihood of him being the murderer is statistically slim, but not impossible. It would be extremely unusual for the type of crime perpetrated against the Christopher family to be the offender’s first crime.

The extent of violence inflicted on Charisse Christopher in particular is characteristic of an offender acting out of anger, retaliation, or passion. Payne had no discernible connection to Christopher that would elicit these feelings. The prosecution alleged that Payne made sexual advances toward Christopher and became violent when he was rebuked. But Payne had no history of sexual aggression or assault and he was waiting for his girlfriend to get home. It wouldn’t make sense that he would attack a random woman and her children instead of stifling his sexual desires until he was with his girlfriend.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up a fairly touchy aspect of this case. Charisse Christopher and her children were white. Pervis Payne is black. As we discussed earlier in this episode, there is a documented history of African Americans being disproportionately sentenced to death for killing white people. It is also likely that the investigators for this case were majority white. In 2019, Nicholas Christopher, now 35-year-old, gave an interview to the british tabloid, the Sun. Nicholas recounts the events of his mother and sister’s murders with surprising detail. He claims that he did not see the face of his mother’s attacker, but his aunt Angie later said that Nicholas saw a picture of Payne on the news after he had recovered and he told her “That’s the man who killed my mom”.

While this seems like compelling evidence, and this analysis is not intended to diminish Nicholas Christopher’s experience or loss, there are well researched reasons why Nicholas could have easily misidentified Payne. Cross-Race bias, something that will come into play in future episodes, is a huge issue with Witness Identification. Cross-Racial bias is the reduced ability to differentiate people of races other than one’s own. In criminal cases, this can lead to misidentification if the defendant is a different race than the witness. Studies have shown that babies as young as 6 months old demonstrate a level of cross-racial bias. Nicholas may have seen Pervis Payne and identified him simply because he was black and wasn’t drastically different to the real killer. It should also be noted that Nicholas was only 3 years old. There is a good reason why children that young do not usually testify in criminal trials. Children that young are extremely open to outside influence, they lie, they can be re-traumatized by the experience, and they don’t have reliable memories. On top of all of that, Nicholas was an extremely traumatized child, who wouldn’t be after experiencing what he did? Trauma can cloud a person’s perception and their ability to code memories accurately. So while Nicholas’ interview is interesting, I would be hard pressed to weigh it against other more forensically solid aspects of this case.

I think that the assertions made at trial by the prosecution that Payne had been doing drugs and drinking all day should not have been admitted without proof that drugs were in his body when he was arrested. Without proof, a claim like this is mere speculation. The failure to test the items from Christopher’s bedroom is another failing that I have trouble looking past. With modern forensic science at our disposal, I think there’s no excuse for not testing potentially critical evidence. The worst thing that can happen, from the prosecution’s standpoint, is that the DNA does not match Payne. Even in that scenario, wouldn’t you rather admit that your theory was wrong than be a party to the execution of an innocent man? It is in the interest of truth and justice for Charisse, Laci, and Nicholas Christopher to investigate every shred of evidence. If DNA proves that someone else was in Charisse Christopher’s apartment in the moments before her death, then Pervis Payne deserves another trial.

A 2014 study conducted by Samuel Gross, Barbara O’Brien, Chen Hu, and Edward H. Kennedy concluded that at least 4.1% of people on death row at any given time are likely innocent and/or would be exonerated. According to th Death Penalty Information Database, there are 18 likely innocent people who have been executed since 1976, that we know of. The most recent addition to that list was made after the execution of Larry Swearingen on August 21st, 2019. As of now, Pervis Payne will join the ranks of executed but possibly innocent people on December 3rd, 2020. Despite the solid information pertaining to Payne’s intellectual disability, baseless assertions by prosecutors, the lack of forensic evidence against him, his enduring proclamation of innocence, alternative suspects, and the sheer lack of violent tendency or motive, the state of Tennessee does not seem to care that they may be executing an innocent, intellectually disabled man. But this isn’t a rare occurrence. It’s merely a story line that has played out in America for centuries, and even with all of our new technology and investigative strategies, it keeps replaying. Why? Because we let it.

If you feel that Pervis Payne’s execution should be stopped, please call the office of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee at (615) 741-2001, you could tweet to him, his twitter username is @GovBillLee, or you can email him through the Tennessee Government website https://www.tn.gov/governor/contact-us.html.

#death penalty #true crime #murder #forensic psychology #crime #podcast #true crime podcast #pervis payne #pervis tyrone payne #the innocence project #capital punishment #charisse christopher

3 notes · View notes

slytherpuff9 · 5 years

Text

Things I Cannot And Will Not Believe Anymore

1.People are inherently evil.

2.People deserve the apocalypse/hell.

3. Women are responsible for the sexual impulses of men/can control the sexual impulses of men.

4. Men deserve authority over women.

5. Doubt is the devil using my spiritual gifts against me.

6.I owe sex to my husband/other forms of submission or obedience to my husband.

7. LGBTQIA+ are confused/evil/led astray -- their orientation/identification is wrong or invalid and forcing them to change/deny this about themselves will be good for them.

8. Women should not be in positions of leadership/roles that are considered to be traditionally masculine. Certainly not over men.

9. Jesus is the only absolution you need for sins that hurt other people.

10. Self-worth is pride/arrogance/vanity.

11. Religious values should dictate secular laws/civil rights.

12. Intimacy (psychological OR physical) that I share with men I love before I meet/marry my husband cheats my husband out of elements of my sexuality/liberties upon my body to which he is entitled.

13. Mental illness is merely a soul crying out for God and professional help is a scam to steal your money and lead you away from God.

14. People in unfortunate situations must have done something to deserve it/bring it upon themselves.

15. Women who have abortions want to kill their babies/hate children/are cruel and callous and loose/would choose murder over living with consequences of their presumed promiscuous lifestyle/believe abortion is the only form of birth control.

16. Men cannot and should not be expected to control their sexual impulses toward others on their own. (see #3)

17. Evidence supporting scientific/medical/psychological advancements that clash with a literal interpretation of the biblical account should be ignored, boycotted, banned, and impeded or even outlawed.

18. Sexual confidence (real or perceived) cheapens one’s worth as a person or invalidates one’s spirituality.

19. Teens cannot be trusted with an actual education in safe sex. In fact, I should deliberately mislead my daughter about birth control until FOUR MONTHS BEFORE HER WEDDING. There’s no way that could backfire spectacularly, cause damage to her health, her marriage, or even my ambitions to have grandchildren one day. (NOT ON YOUR LIFE, NOT FOR MANY, MANY YEARS!!!)

20. People who are not “with” me -- who believe what I do without question -- are “against” me -- militantly attacking me personally. The people “out there” are out to get me. They want to tear down my faith and send me and my children to hell.

21. Teens and unmarried women cannot be trusted with freely available contraception. If we make contraception available, they will do ALL the sex! O.O *gasp! horror! clutches pearls!*

22. It is okay and an expression of Christ-like love to demand that other people forsake their lifestyle, religion, and worldview, but feel personally persecuted and threatened when they question mine.

23. Teens cannot be trusted.

24. Women cannot be trusted.

25. Men cannot be trusted.

26. Doubt is selfish/dangerous/a slippery slope and means I’m not really sincere in my faith, or my faith is weak, or can grieve the Holy Spirit and take away my faith completely.

27. The Bible can and should be used to enforce anti-immigration policy. (see #11)

28. The Bible can and should be used to shame/denigrate victims of police brutality.

29. Unfortunate accidents/hardships that happen to me or my family can and should be seen as signs that God is punishing or testing me.

30. Disobedience -- even psychological disobedience (i.e. skepticism) -- casts into question or completely invalidates my morality.

31. It is okay to rail against affordable healthcare, actively impede it in the polls, then slander health organizations like Planned Parenthood and shame those who accept their help ... all without providing a viable alternative but claiming that the church can do it better.

32. “You just need to have faith”, “It’s a mystery”, “That’s a good/hard question, I’ll get back to you” (but he never DID), or “That’s the Old Testament Law, Jesus freed us from that” (when so many other O.T. laws are quoted and used to define sin, just sayin’ ...) are ACCEPTABLE and SATISFACTORY answers to questions about the 100% literal, true, God-breathed verses explicitly prescribing stoning or marrying rape survivors to their rapists ...

10/10 FELT SO SAFE AS A TEENAGE AND YOUNG ADULT CHRISTIAN WOMAN!

33. People who reject the evangelical message are just butt-hurt, pouty, selfish, petulant liberals who don’t want to face hard truths.

34. People who believe differently or celebrate different religious holidays in winter should be forced to use my seasonal religious greeting and failure to do so indicates a vitriolic antagonism to everything I stand for. But it is unreasonable to expect me to extend the same consideration to them.

35. It is okay to deny/limit/discourage my child’s access to the level of education required to succeed in the world we live in (even with the caveat that it clashes with my beliefs/worldview and I believe it to be false) because I do not trust my child to discern my interpretation of the Bible in the face of a single chapter in their no doubt riveting 10th grade biology textbook. I’m sure they’ll just breeze through that in college.

36. Children are also not to be trusted with intellectual/psychological/spiritual autonomy.

37. Not a single word of this book could possibly have been mistranslated, misinterpreted, metaphorical, made obsolete with time, or simply penned by a woefully misguided human being. (see #32)

38. If I open my mind enough to really understand the person I am trying to reach, my brain will fall out.

39. To seriously question these things is to deny my faith/attack that of others.

40. It is okay to train a child to be a soldier in my culture war.

41. It’s okay -- virtuous and caring, even -- to tell someone who is struggling or grieving that this life is meant to be a trial and their lot will improve drastically after they die.

42. There was a point in human history when water covered Everest by 22 feet of water, and scientists are actively hiding the geological evidence because they are in league with Satan and want me to go to hell.

43. Obedience = protection. “If you just follow God’s plan, nothing bad will ever happen to you.” The Bible is Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth and if you just do what it says, you’ll live a long and successful and fulfilling life.

44. Bad things happen to good people because omniscient God has reason to question/test their devotion. They are just being petulant or are deluded about their secret sin/doubt/disobedience, and if they search themslves and the Bible, they will see that God is well within His rights to hurt their families/hurt them/cause this hardship. (see #1,2,5,10,14,18,20,26,29,30)

45. It is okay -- advisable, even -- to tell someone who is struggling that they are being prideful/sinful/selfish, and they need to “die to self”. That can in no way be interpreted as a message of “just get over yourself or die already.”

46. In fact, just the whole ANY death imagery should be considered kind and appropriate dialogue with a human being who might be thinking of suicide. They should just know that isn’t what I mean at this turbulent point in their life. I have no responsibility to consider any other interpretation of my words or the biblical jargon/verses I use. I have no responsibility to examine what those words/jargon/verses really even say.

47. A survivor of abuse or assault has a civic duty to come forward to keep me and my daughters/children safe, but I have NO civic duty to believe/accept their account if:

a. I know the perpetrator.

b. They know the perpetrator.

c. They wear clothes I disapprove of.

d. It’s been a certain period of time.

e. They behave in a way that I disapprove of.

f. They are “sex-crazed/rebellious” teenagers or unmarried young adults.

g. The perpetrator is a public figure I approve of.

h. They “allowed” themselves to be alone with the perpetrator/somehow “put themselves” in this situation.

i. They continued a relationship with the perpetrator.

j. They are married/related to the perpetrator.

k. I am THE authority on what is abuse/assault, and believe their account does not qualify.

48. Not only do I NOT have a civic duty to believe/accept the accounts of abuse/assault survivors, I have the right to slander them publicly when I don’t. To shame them. To question the veracity of their account in the same breath that I demand why they didn’t jump at the chance to defend the women I actually care about in the wake of their trauma. They are the problem here.

49. It is impossible to have a fulfilling spiritual experience/personal contentment in life if I do not believe all of the things on this list.

50. It is certainly impossible to have a fulfilling spiritual experience/relationship with compassionate and unconditionally loving Christ if I do not believe all of the things on this list.

51. I have a spiritual and civic duty to force society worldwide to conform to my specific beliefs. (see #11)

52. It is okay to tell an underage girl that her clothing is distracting grown men in the congregation, but NOT tell the grown men in the congregation presumably raising these complaints that their “distracting” sexual thoughts are predatory and constitute pedophilia, or even incest in some cases. Similarly, it is okay to tell these girls that their clothing is distracting boys their age, but NOT tell these boys that their “distracting” sexual thoughts are predatory and sexually objectifying their sisters in Christ. It is okay to put the onus of males’ sexual sin/distraction on underage girls who presumably have better things to do (like stress about their skirt and posture and bra straps) than listen to the sermon the men are blissfully enjoying.That isn’t at all distracting or distressing to the underage girls, who need the message ... less?

Will add more as they occur to me. If you feel personally attacked by any of these things I no longer believe, please know that was not my intention, but perhaps you ought to bring that to God and find out why it is so offensive to you that I do not believe it. I was taught all of these “values” in a church by wonderful people who know not what their doctrine really says to the children they are raising and the people they are trying to reach.

#exvangelical #exfundie #statement of disbelief

62 notes · View notes

automatismoateo · 4 years

Text

A God that rapes human beings, and even delights in the act, is not a God that is worthy of any worship. via /r/atheism

Submitted July 20, 2020 at 05:39PM by MelodicEarth2 (Via reddit https://ift.tt/2ZKHnGr) A God that rapes human beings, and even delights in the act, is not a God that is worthy of any worship.

"I [God] will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped." (Zechariah 14:2)

"Does disaster come to a city unless the LORD has done it?" (Amos 3:6)

Raping women by conquering lands is a very corrupt human behavior throughout history, a very scary and disgusting human behavior indeed. Read about the Red Army, how those whom the armies conquered had raped all the women ages 8 to 80, forcing themselves into their bodies. Try reading the diaries of the women who were raped. And you do realize little girls were raped as a result of God's decree as well right? The soldiers partaking in the Red Army invasions were told not to do such things, but they still engaged in those evil acts. Imagine when God sets your heart to conquer a land, how much more atrocious and uninhibited your actions would be to those women, those little girls? In their eyes they were nothing but meat supplied by God. And Jesus caused it all. The mothers tried to kill themselves along with their daughters to escape this fate of being mass raped.

Why is the Bible immoral? Well, we see the evil of human beings, how they rape children and women whom they conquer in war. The victims of these rapes, lets say they go to the Bible for comfort, surely, the great God, the righteous judge of all the earth must have an answer to these sort of things? Surely God would never condone, never act in such a way that these vile men during the Red Scare did, right? And she opens the Bible and what does she read?

She reads that God does the exact same thing, and delights in it-- the rape of women.

The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth" (Psalm 135:6).

God did not regret this action, rather, it was a judgement, and the Bible tells us:

“Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!” (Revelation 16:7)

We are to celebrate his judgements.

A God that does this to human beings doesn't deserve any persons' worship. The question is not whether God exists or not, the question is, would a moral man worship an immoral God? The answer is yes. They will, just as moral men blindly followed Hitler, while he baked Jews in the ovens -- all the while God burns those who disagree with him in Hell.

Women have felt the pain of rape because of Jesus Christ. Christians shouldn't go telling people that Jesus loves them without telling them that Jesus also used human beings to cause pain and suffering to others. Like playthings. A Christian is telling people that a rapist is loving, or even worse, hiding the fact that this god is a rapist, and imploring others to believe in him.

Jesus in the New Testament admits that he is the God of the Old Testament, "Before Abraham was, I Am", which of course is God's name, the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. So he just admitted that he is the God which made mount Sinai smoke and shake. Also, John tells us in the New Testament that the vision of God which Isaiah saw in the Old Testament was in fact Jesus Christ, indicating again the God of the New Testament, Jesus Christ, was the one that had these girls raped. It's his own confession. In addition, the Biblical concept of God is a Trinity. This means that when God rained down rocks and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus was not absent, nor was he opposed to the act. Rather he was there, with Father and Holy Spirit all in unison making the act happen. This is the same with every other case of God's atrocities in the Old Testament, whether it is rape or murder.

Here is the answer to why God treats human beings in the way that he does:

"When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for honorable use and another to throw garbage into? (Romans 9:21)

God looks at many human beings as trash. That's why he can mercilessly drown us, burn us, toy with us, rape us. God looks at humanity in this way, he created them so that's why he tortures them like a child torturing a pet. That's why in the Bible God specifically ordered the kidnap and rape of women. God is worse than the most wicked of men. But Christians share this same mentality, they look at human beings as trash -- wicked, sinners, they even look at themselves in that manner. We can talk all day about the follies and so called sins of human beings, but all this from a God that is worse than any devil or man. It is an immoral burden to place upon people. In the passage you read in Zechariah, God is the one bringing the evil and the good, again, playing with human lives as he sees fit. So what if there is rape and murder as a result of your toying with man?

We can throw away our own reasoning and say man can't decide morality for themselves. But I'll tell you this, it isn't to be decided by this God. We look at God as the one that decides what morality is and isn't, yet his actions are contrary to what is stated of him in the Bible, "Will not the judge of all the earth do that which is just?" A 6 year old knows that these acts are evil. The human spirit knows what evil is.

"Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in broad day light." (2 Sam. 12:11)

God is angry with David for killing a husband and raping the wife. Did God stop the killing and rape? Nope. God sat by and watched, doing nothing. God decides to punish David and one of the punishments is to take David’s wives and allow them to be raped. Um…what…the…heck?!?! The women get raped. That’s David’s punishment. This is God. He’s supposed to be all-knowing. How is it not possible that part of that all-knowing does not involve coming up with a punishment that doesn’t punish the innocent? This leads us to 3 options, and only 3 options. Either God is truly stupid and thus immoral, or there is no God, or God is immoral while not being stupid-- which amplifies his immorality to an even greater degree.

What is the nature of the sexual act contemplated in Deut. 21:10-14?:

"When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife -Then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and do her nails, And she shall remove the garment of her captivity from her, and remain in your house and weep for her father and mother a for month, and after that you may approach her and have intercourse with her, and she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her."

We shall focus on the expression "violated her," 'initah in Hebrew, from the root 'anah. It is in the translation of this word that an attitudinal difference between the Targumim becomes apparent. In 2 Samuel 13;11-14, the story of Amnon and Tamar, the root 'anah is used twice: "do not violate me," and then "he overpowered her, he violated her, and he lay with her." If we understand "and he lay with her" to mean "and he had intercourse with her," we may understand from the juxtaposition of the two concepts that 'anah can be considered sexual violence. That is, in this instance the use of 'anah together with "had intercourse" seems to imply actual rape.

This seems to be the case as well in Gen.34:2, the story of Dinah and Shechem. There the text says: "He [Shechem] took her, and he lay with [had intercourse] with her and he violated her [vaye'anehah]." 'Anah alone would not mean necessarily rape, but simply sexual violence of some sort. Rape is again implied here by the use of 'anah and "had intercourse" together.

The idea of rape may also be expressed with other terminology. In Deuteronomy 22:25, 28 we find the verb "had intercourse" used with the verbs "took hold of," "grabbed", to imply the idea of forced intercourse i.e. rape. The verb 'anah is used alone in Lamentations 5:11, Ezekiel 22:10, and Judges 19:25, and from the context in these instances seems to imply rape.

We must recognize, however, that though it is important to determine what is meant by 'anah in Deuteronomy 21:14, rape is only one way of exerting sexual violence. Clearly sexual violence is conveyed in all the quoted instances where 'anah is used. Thus although there is no specific mention of rape in Deuteronomy 21:14, the word 'initah implies that the woman's consent (if any) to intercourse was due to her circumstances.

The expression 'initah is particularly poignant, a point that seems to have been recognized in both the Onqelos and Neophyti Targums. Onqelos actually uses the root 'anah in his translation, while Neophyti 1 has "you have exercised your power/authority [reshut] over her." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, on the other hand, considers 'anah to be only actual intercourse, translating with the verb shamash, and thus failing to transmit the Bible's sensitivity to the captive's powerlessness.

Numbers 31: 17-18

17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. 18 "But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.

So what do you think God/Moses, or whomever had in mind; sweet-talk and flirt with the young girls? These sex deprived 50 year old, 30 year old, 25 year old guys hitting on these children and teenagers?

The texts says Israelite warriors are commanded to kill everyone except young virgin women, whom they are permitted to keep for themselves.

Men. Capturing women. Capturing young women. Capturing virgin young women.

It's incredibly obvious what it's saying.

The mere idea of the God of heaven ordering the death of women and innocent children so outraged Thomas Paine that he said such a scenario was sufficient evidence in and of itself to cause him to reject the divine origin of the Bible (1795, p. 90). In fact, he condemned the Bible for its moral atrocities, and even went so far as to blame the Bible for virtually every moral injustice ever committed. He wrote:

Whence arose the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? (p. 185).

As you read the Bible,

You suddenly notice the children of Israel are precisely all the time being ordered to covet. Being enjoined to covet, being told they must envy and hope to annex the lands, the animals and the women of neighboring tribes. They kept going by greed. By the thought that soon, all these peoples properties shall be ours. And that we'll be licensed to take it by force, and kill them and have the land but not their people. This is perhaps why there are no prohibitions against, say, slavery, rape, genocide, or child abuse in the 10 Commandments.

It's not a matter of leaving these out or applying situational ethics to a time that was not ours. It's not that. Such things have always been known of and usually deplored. It's more I fear that such terrible things as rape, enslavement, genocide and child abuse, were just about to be mandatory during this time. They're just about to be forced on people as things they must do if a conquest was to continue,

#reddit

1 note · View note

selfdestructive-kindofpeople · 5 years

Text

#stopstreetharassment #stopcatcalling #punishtherapist

I was 11 years old when I heard 10th graders (15/16 years old) walk behind me, saying "look at that ass!" and giggling.

#thisisharassment

I was 12 when I had a guy walk up to me and stare right at my chest, standing right infront of me for a few seconds before I walked around him.

#stopharassment

I was 13 when I had a guy grab me between my legs at school.

#donttouchpeoplewithoutpermission

I was 15 when I ran out of class to go to the bathroom real quick and heard a guy shout after me: "Nice boobs!"

#stopcatcalling

I was 16 when my best friend of 3 years, who I then dated for 4 months at the time of this incidence, took me and raped me on the couch in their living room.

#dontrape

I was 16 when I told my new boyfriend what happened. A year later I woke up to him raping me on his bed.

#askforpermission

I was 18 when a stranger looked at me, saying "I will fuck that one" to his friends before he walked up to me, asking if I had a boyfriend. After I answered with yes he said "I don't believe you. I will see your here tomorrow." regardless to say I did not show up at that spot for several weeks, though it's right on my way to school/ back home.

#stopstreetharassment

One day, when I finally had the courage to go outside in a skirt, feeling cute, liking myself for once, a grown man in his 30-40s started honking at me while I was walking on the sidewalk.

#stopbeingsogross

I am 20 and I AM SCARED to go out on dates.

I have massive trust issues.

I have extreme body issues.

I HATE myself and strangers.

I don't believe compliments and feel ashamed about any uncalled for comments on my appearance.

Anything regarding sex or looking sexually appealing gives me anxiety, sometimes just a little but often it shuts my brain down and I go into panic mode.

I still get panic attacks when just thinking of these incidents. Talking about it causes even worse panic attacks.

I take several pills a day to stay calm and to function throughout the day.

I have to deal with my anxiety 24/7.

I have high functional depression.

I went through anorexic and bulimic behavior and through eating senselessly, partially caused by depression and self hate.

I AM JUST SCARED TO GO OUTSIDE, TO GO ONLINE!

I HAVE HAD OVER 200 GROWN MEN TEXT ME PERONSALLY, SHOWING THEIR DICKS, ASKING IF I WOULD LIKE WHAT I SAW AND I AM TERRIFIED, I AM TRAUMATIZED AND I AM VERY ANGRY!

STOP HARASSMENT!

STOP RAPING! START ASKING FOR PERMISSION!

RESPECT BOUNDARIES!

STOP BEING SO DISGUSTING AND SELF-CENTERED!

Stop acting like this is just how it is, as if this is what you have to deal with because you were born as a girl, because you grow to become a woman, because you have a feminine body, because you appear to be female. Act like what it is. We are all human. We are all people. LISTENING AND RESPECTING ARE BASIC HUMAN MANNERS, WERE YOU RAISED BY ROCKS THAT YOU WON'T ACT ACCORDINGLY AND MAKE UP EXCUSES?

19 notes · View notes

nerds4life · 5 years

Text

The Essence of Evil: Sex with Children Has Become Big Business in America

By John W. Whitehead for Global Research, April 24, 2019

“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old.

This is America’s dirty little secret.

Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.

As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes,

“It’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a ‘righteous’ pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings.”

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.

According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

Who buys a child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life.

“They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

“Human trafficking—the commercial sexual exploitation of American children and women, via the Internet, strip clubs, escort services, or street prostitution—is on its way to becoming one of the worst crimes in the U.S.,” said prosecutor Krishna Patel.

This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.

This is not a problem found only in big cities.

It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out,

“The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”

Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.

It’s not.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice.

In order to avoid detection (in some cases aided and abetted by the police) and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.

For instance, the Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.

No doubt about it: this is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.

Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger.

The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out,

“Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.“

“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking. “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”

Where did this appetite for young girls come from?

Look around you.

Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children.

“All it takes is one look at MySpace photos of teens to see examples—if they aren’t imitating porn they’ve actually seen, they’re imitating the porn-inspired images and poses they’ve absorbed elsewhere,” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek. “Latex, corsets and stripper heels, once the fashion of porn stars, have made their way into middle and high school.”

This is what Bennett refers to as the “pornification of a generation.”

“In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives,” concludes Bennett. “Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.”

In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators. And then we wonder why our young women are being preyed on, trafficked and abused?

Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported,

“Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.”

Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.

Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others, persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.

Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix, Ariz., is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist. Those who responded were often married with children, and the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed. Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days.

While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued, others are not so lucky. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).

With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon.

For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.

Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.

Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”:

Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “damage group.” “In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,” she explained. “Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.”

What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become.

“They’d get you hungry then to train you” to have oral sex. “They put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older, I’d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn’t hurt.”

Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., report that when it comes to sex, the appetites of many Americans have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. As one agent noted,

“We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.”

This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them. Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario, a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years. She said:

“In America, we had ‘special jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.”

A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.

Holly Austin Smith (image on the right) was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison.

Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old.

“I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune:

“In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”

One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.

This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.

Trafficked women and children are advertised on the internet, transported on the interstate, and bought and sold in swanky hotels.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government’s war on sex trafficking—much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs and crime—has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police check points, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public, while doing little to make our communities safer.

So what can you do?

Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities.

Stop feeding the monster: Sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.

This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. It is estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.

Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement.

Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes” such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.

Finally, the police need to do a better job of training, identifying and responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves; and hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds.

That so many women and children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things: one, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved—except the victims; two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change; and three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.

But the truth is that we are all guilty of contributing to this human suffering. The traffickers are guilty. The consumers are guilty. The corrupt law enforcement officials are guilty. The women’s groups who do nothing are guilty. The foreign peacekeepers and aid workers who contribute to the demand for sex slaves are guilty. Most of all, every individual who does not raise a hue and cry over the atrocities being committed against women and children in almost every nation around the globe—including the United States—is guilty.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

#spread this #make sure people know #get educated #be aware #save some lives #i worry many of you are prime targets for this #I can see the insecurity and desire for attention #rape culture #human trafficking #mine #this is a problem throughout the world

14 notes · View notes

wheelygoodteddys · 5 years

Text

Women's rights in religion:

Old Testiment:

Modern day Jews see that there is a misconception about women and their rights in Judeism. The train of thought is that men and women are equal just with differing roles and positions.

However, in Genesis 2:7, women was made as a "helper" to man. Traditionally, in that time period, the term "helper" is more accurately a term used for someone inferior.

Later, in Genesis 2:27, Adam is permitted to name the woman. By naming a person or a thing, you had authority over it/them.

Furthermore, in Genesis 3:16, Adam is given rule over Eve by God. "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

In Genesis 4:19 Lemech became the first known polygamist. Followed by: Esau with 3 wives; Jacob: 2; Ashur: 2; Gideon: many; Elkanah: 2; David: many; Rehaboam: 3; Abijah: 14. Jehoram, Joash, Ahab, Jeholachin and Belshazzar also had multiple wives. Solomon holds the record. He had 700 wives of royal birth, as well as 300 concubines!

In Genesis 16:2 Sarah gave Abraham her maid servant to have sexual intercourse with, in the hope to give Abraham a son. There is no indication of consent on Hagar's part, therefore, a historical assumption that slave women could be raped at their master's command.

Supporting the low status of women is another scripture from Genesis 19:8, where men had surrounded Lot's home, in Sodom, asking for his male visitors to rape. Instead Lot offered them his 2 virgin daughters who were repeatedly gang raped. This was treated as a preferable and minor transgression due to the low status of women.

Genesis 21:10 also confirms the keeping of numerous concubines who had a much lower status than a wife. Abraham had two concubines; Gideon: at least 1; David: many; Nahor: 1; Jacob: 1; Eliphaz: 1; Gideon: 1; Caleb: 2; Manassah: 1; Saul: 1; David: at least 10; Rehoboam: 60; Solomon: 300; an unidentified Levite: 1; Belshazzar: more than 1.

Exodus 20:17, is the "covert" verse, where a neighbour's property is listed, house, animals, servants and wife. By adding a wife to this list we note that she is mere property.

Exodus 21:2-4, deals with the taking of Hebrew slaves. Males slaves could be given a wife, by their masters, without her consent. After 6 years of service, in the 7th year, a male servant could seek his freedom. However, a female servant could not and her, and her children, belonged to the master for the remainder of her life.

Exodus 21:7, a father was permitted to sell his daughter as a slave.

Exodus 22:16-17, we see in these verse that damage to property is dealt with. Included in this is if a seducer has sexual intercourse with a man's virgin daughter. The father can either give his daughter to the seducer to marry or refuse and therefore, the seducer, is required to pay the father compensation.

The scriptures concerning the lower value of women continues in the following scriptures:

Exodus 23:17

Exodus 21:22-25

Leviticus 12:1-5

Leviticus 18:20

Leviticus 20:10

Leviticus 27:6

Deuteronomy 22:23

Numbers 3:15

Numbers 5:11-31

Numbers 27:8-11

Numbers 30

Deuteronomy 21:10-13

Deuteronomy 22:13-21

Deuteronomy 24:1

Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Deuteronomy 25:11

Judges 19:16-30

2 Chronicles 36:23

"During the Second Temple period, women were not allowed to testify in court trials. They could not go out in public, or talk to strangers. When outside of their homes, they were to be doubly veiled. "They had become second-class Jews, excluded from the worship and teaching of God, with status scarcely above that of slaves." Author: B.A. Robinson

In conclusion, in the days of the Israelites, and implied by Jewish and old testament scriptures, regarding the status of women, in general, they imply a position of "property", rather that an equal standing with men.

All this being said, there are some astonishing women of these ages and times:

Rahab

Esther

Miriam

Deborah

Ruth

Hannah

#jews and judaism #jews #israelites #bible #womens rights #religion #freedom of religion

11 notes · View notes

creepingsharia · 4 years

Text

“Burned Alive”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, June 2020

This report fails to note the continued shut down of churches in the U.S. by tyrannical governors, and the bombing/arson of churches by leftists and anti-maskers.

07/27/2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

Cutfitri Handayani, Indonesia woman whose children were taken from her for converting to Christianity

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of June 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: The jihad on Christians continued unabated in the West Africa nation. In what police described as a “brutal assault,” suspected Muslims raped and slaughtered Uwaila Vera Omozuwa, a 22-year-old Christian girl who was studying inside Redeemed Christian Church of God in Benin City. “We are all devastated by her death,” a spokesman of the church said, before explaining: “She [had] decided to do some private studies during the lockdown because the church was peaceful. She’s been taking the key from the parish pastor and returning it after her studies.” The slain girl’s mother described what happened after she heard of the attack on the church:

I ran [to the church] but before I got there, they took her to a private hospital and when I saw my daughter, I cried. They raped her; the dress she was wearing that morning was white. The white had turned to red; all her body was full of blood…. My daughter was very kind and very intelligent and disciplined. We had just celebrated her admission to university.

In a separate incident, Muslim Fulani herdsmen entered a Christian owned mini-store and shot to death its owner and four other Christians. They did not steal anything from the store or the victims’ bodies. Despite the presence of armed security, the terrorists were able to open fire for a full ten minutes, before absconding without a trace. In response, Ibrahim Agu Iliya, a Christian man, assembled and led a team of unarmed civilians to apprehend the murderers. He said,

These Muslim Fulani herdsmen have been attacking our communities because we are Christians. Their desire is to take over our lands, force us to become Muslims, and if we decline, they kill us….The government’s inability to stop these Muslim Fulani herdsmen is because the government is being controlled by Fulani political leaders headed by Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president, who’s also a Fulani man.

Sunday Samuel—who witnessed and survived the attack, and whose 42-year-old slain sister Asabe Samuel was the store owner—agreed:

I strongly believe that some of these security personnel who are Muslims are conniving with these armed men to attack our people. These killings of Christians here are just too much of a pressure on us, and the sad reality is that our people have made representations to the government at both the state and federal levels and nothing has been done.

In another massacre on June 3—fresh on the heels of a May terror attack in the same region, where “more than 30 corpses of slain Christians still lay in nearby villages”—Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot or hacked to death with machetes nine Christians, most of them church-attending women and children; a three-year-old was seriously wounded. Seven other Christians were kidnapped at gun point.

Burkina Faso: “Christians were among those targeted and killed,” a June 5 report found, after “armed jihadists launched three separate attacks … that left at least 58 dead,” including children; dozens were also injured. A “contact reported that it was clear from the testimony of a survivor that the militants were targeting Christians and humanitarians taking food to an internally displaced people camp, where many mainly-Christian villagers had taken refuge after fleeing prior jihadi violence.” Any of their intended victims which the terrorists discovered were Muslim were spared. A survivor recalled how the driver of his truck had cried “forgive, forgive, we are also followers of the prophet Muhammad!” This caused one of the terrorists to turn to the others and say, “They have the same religion with us,” which prompted an end to the attack on that vehicle. “Jihadi attacks on Christians in the African nation have been on the rise,” the report added: “Last December, at least 14 people were killed when gunmen stormed a Protestant church service… Last April, gunmen killed a Protestant pastor and five other Christians who were leaving a worship service.”

Mali: During near simultaneous raids on three Christian majority villages, “suspected Islamic radicals killed at least 27 people, some of whom were burned alive,” a June 4 report said:

Mali has been in chaos since 2012, when al Qaeda-linked jihadists seized the northern two-thirds of the country. French forces intervened the following year to drive them back, but the militants have since regrouped and expanded their operations into neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger.

A separate report elaborates:

Mali suffered its worst year of extremist violence in seven years in 2019. Jihadi militants carried out murderous attacks in the north and central area, laying waste to Christian villages and causing hundreds to flee with only the clothes on their backs. In one of the worst attacks, in June 2019, at least 100 men, women and children were slaughtered in Sobame Da, a mainly-Christian village in the Mopti region of central Mali.

Pakistan: On June 4, Muslim neighbors attacked a Christian family for purchasing a home in what they claimed was a “Muslim neighborhood.” Despite being operated on five times, the father, Nadeem Joseph—who along with his mother-in-law was shot—succumbed to his wounds and died in a hospital on June 29. Prior to the attack, the Christian family’s Muslim neighbors had regularly harassed them—including by damaging their home, riding loud motorcycles in front of it, and calling them “chooras,” a derogatory term meaning “unclean Christians.” Before he died, Joseph had made a video from his hospital bed explaining what happened: “I am feeling scared even in the hospital,” he said. “I fear [for] my life and my family[’s]…. A month ago, I purchased a house in TV Colony. I still have to make the final payments to the seller, but Salman Khan, a Muslim in the neighborhood, has started harassing my family.” After asking him to leave the neighborhood, because it was “meant for Muslim residents only,” Khan exclaimed: “How dare a Christian family live amid Muslims?… Christians and Jews are the opponents of Muslims. Therefore, you cannot stay in this house.” It was then that Khan opened fire on Joseph and his family; he was shot twice in the stomach, and his mother-in-law in the shoulder.

In a separate incident, police killed a man after he cited his Christian faith as reason not to falsify his testimony, which they were urging him to do. On June 22, police broke into the home of Waqar Masih. According to the Christian:

Arif Jutt, a policeman, along with his others illegally barged into my house. They searched for my father [Younis] and threw him down from his bed. They beat my father with their guns and continuously kicked him in stomach. My father could not survive the torture and breathed his last immediately.

Police were trying to get Younas to recant his eyewitness testimony against a Muslim family accused of murder. When beating him did not yield results, they tried to bribe him. “I am a Christian and I will never cheat and get bribed,” Younis had responded. “My father’s deep commitment to his faith made the policemen aggressive,” Waqar continued. “During the attack, one of the officers shouted, ‘We will teach him a lesson for insulting us!’”

Sudan: On June 6 in Omdurman, a number of mosque leaders called on the faithful to rid their “Muslim area” of South Sudanese Christians, prompting Muslims to rise up against and beat—and in one instance, kill—Christians. According to the report, “The mosque leaders told those at the evening prayer that the South Sudanese were infidels, criminals and brewers of alcohol, which is forbidden in Islam.” In one of the attacks to follow, “three young Muslim men with rods, sticks and rifles subsequently beat two Christians.” According to a source, “The attack left one of the two Christians [an 18-year-old] in critical condition after sustaining injuries on his head. The Muslims who consider the area Muslim territory were shouting, ‘They [South Sudanese Christians] must leave this place by force.’” Later, “mobs of young Muslim men” set fire to 16 make-shift shelters of plastic sheeting that had sheltered South Sudanese Christians, causing them to flee; 10 were injured in the assault, including one woman. Speaking afterwards, she said, “Muslim men have long harassed Christian women… This issue is disturbing us, and it is not acceptable—but what can we do, oh God?”

Then, on June 20, near the capital of Khartoum, “young Muslim men shouting the jihadist slogan ‘Allah Akbar [God is greater]’ stabbed a [35-year-old] Christian to death in a street assault on him… Mariel Bang is survived by his wife and four children ranging in age from 1 to 4 years old.” Four other Christians who were traveling with Bang—three of whom were women—were also beaten, one left in critical condition. “We will burn this place,” one of the assailants was heard to say.

Mozambique: “It was fierce, cruel and lasted three days,” a nun said of a jihadi raid on the town of Macomia that began on May 28 and continued for three days. She and the other Teresian Carmelite Sisters of Saint Joseph, who have served Macomia for 16 years, had temporarily fled their school and boarding house. They returned on June 4, “even though the danger had by no means receded,” said Sister Blanca Nubia Castaño, because they were hoping, “at the very least to be able to visit (our) employees and their families and help them and give them new courage”:

As a result of this barbarism, the town center was completely destroyed, the majority of the administrative infrastructure was damaged and the commercial and shopping center was reduced to ashes…. We still don’t know the number of civilian victims or those of the security forces. On June 3, people slowly began to return to their homes, some of which had been burned, while others had been looted…. Our mission was saved because it is situated in the hills, close to a military base.

According to the report, “Since the end of 2017, violence in the region has claimed the more than 1100 lives” and “caused the displacement of some 200,000 people.”

Attacks on Apostates

Indonesia: On June 17, Cutfitri (or Zulfitri) Handayani, a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity, uploaded an impassioned video recording (with English subtitles) describing her ordeals at the hands of her family, while regularly asking, “Is it wrong to have another religion? Is Christianity wrong?” Among other abuses, her Muslim family and that of her ex-husband took custody of her two young sons, and falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped. During her pleading, which was interrupted by uncontrollable weeping, she begged her sister to “please leave [at least] one of my children, don’t take them both…. How can you, my own family, seize my own children—are you happy at my condition, suffering without my children?” She said that her sister would eventually surrender the young children to their father, who, Handayani hinted, is engaged in illegal activities. “I beg you sister, reveal the truth, don’t slander [innocent] people.” She revealed that she was told that, in order for her children to be returned to her, she would first have to “return to Islam,” to which she replied, “even if it means I be murdered, I will never return there, because my faith belongs here, in Christianity!”

Uganda: Muslims beat a Muslim convert to Christianity and his wife for refusing to recant, and torched their home. Marijan Olupot, formerly an Islamic sheikh, had secretly embraced Christianity on Christmas Day 2019. Later in May, he confessed his conversion to his two wives. One joined him, the other refused—and reported the matter to a local Muslim leader, who publicized the apostasy among the local Muslim population. Accordingly, on June 8, around 11:30 pm, Muslim villagers surrounded and torched the convert’s home. He, his wife, and three children—10, 12, and 14—barely managed to escape from the rear exit door. “Unfortunately as we were fleeing in the night, the attackers managed to get hold of my wife and beat her with sticks, injuring her left hand and back and the right leg, but thank God my Christian neighbors rescued her,” the fugitive apostate explained:

As we were fleeing, I heard one of the Muslims, named Hamuza, calling out that the house should be completely destroyed [at which point the house was set on fire]…. We need prayers at this trying moment, as the Muslims are out to kill me. My other wife is scheming for my death.

In a separate but similar incident, Muslims “beat a Christian convert with sticks and burned his home for refusing to renounce Christ,” a June 22 report said. According to the 27-year-old apostate from Islam, he refused to open his door after area Muslims came knocking at night. So, “[t]hey destroyed the door and made entry, but I escaped through the rear door. They followed me and got hold of me and began beating me up. Neighbors came when I screamed for help.” After a neighbor took him to, and while he was being treated in a hospital, the same Muslims “returned to his house and set it on fire,” he said.

General Abuse of Christians

Pakistan: A Christian man and his family were essentially enslaved and abused “for their Christian faith,” a human rights activist said in a June 24 report. Earlier in 2015, Bashir Masih, a Christian man, had agreed to be Ali Babar Waraich’s servant for an advance sum equivalent to $2,397 USD. After five years of labor, not only did his Muslim “master” refuse to release Bashir and his family from their indentured servitude, but it was revealed that he had been abusing them. According to Dr. Riaz Aasi, who is closely acquainted with this case,

During Waraich’s custody, Bashir and his wife were beaten and abused for their Christian faith. However, Bashir [was] never hesitant to proclaim and practice his faith…. As a result of continuous years of abuse, Bashir’s legs have twisted, and he can’t walk without support. Bashir has never been provided with medical aid for his legs…. Christian victims of bounded labor are voiceless. They are extremely pressurized and threatened in the villages by landlords, resulting in the loss of their courage to speak against injustice. They prefer to suffer rather than raising their voices for justice. Therefore, victims in most cases keep silent to protect their families. Bashir went through the same experience.

In a separate but similar incident, a Christian teenager was sexually assaulted by his Muslim employer in early June; the boy’s father and brother were also beaten for trying to seek justice for him. Saim Masih, 13, began working for Muhammad Tauseef to pay off his father’s loan from the Muslim (equivalent to $2,128 USD). After a year’s worth of work, Saim’s father argued that the debt had been paid and that his son’s salary would need to be raised if Muhammad wanted the youth to continue working for him. The Muslim “got irritated and rejected the demand,” a human rights activist explained. He beat the father while calling him “a ‘choora,’ a derogatory term used to denote Pakistani Christians as untouchable.” He then “began beating and sexually assaulting” the 13-year-old boy, to quote his older brother, Saqar. However, when Saqar went to police to register a complaint against Muhammad, “police refused the application and abused Saqar,” who “was then pressurized to withdraw the application, but he refused.” As a result, on June 5, the older brother went “missing for about 30 hours. When he was found, his body was covered with multiple injuries.” Masked men also threatened the father and other family members to drop the complaint. “To date,” concludes the June 19 report, “local police have done little to protect Saim or his family. This is likely due to the religious bias faced by Christians in Pakistan.”

Finally, in a June 14 report, Hannah Chowdhry, a Pakistani human rights activist, offered more details concerning a church attack that occurred on May 9, when a Muslim mob trying “to take advantage “of the coronavirus lockdown … attempted to break into the church in a bid to illegally wrestle the property from its rightful owners.” She elaborated:

There were two mafia gang members who brought five or six other men with them with guns and pistols…. They broke down the outer wall of the church. There was a cemented cross as well that they broke down and threw on the floor and they tried to break into the church…. Although the people are terrified about what has happened, they have started up services in the church again …. This happens on a regular basis and we just have to make people aware of what is happening around the world…. It’s devastating that this is still happening even during the pandemic.

Another rights activist added that authorities should but rarely take action against such land-grabbers; this “creates fear in local congregations and takes away their freedom to practice their faith.”

Iraq: On June 2, “suspicious fires” consumed over 240 acres of mostly Christian land in the Nineveh district; they severely damaged “the livelihoods of those who are attempting to rebuild their lives following displacement from the Islamic State (ISIS).” According to the report,

This is not the first instance of crop fires being set in Nineveh. Many residents are quick to blame either ISIS or the PMF (Popular Mobilization Forces), an Iranian-backed militia which controls the territory. The PMF is also a strong supporter of the Shabak, an ethnic [but Muslim] minority who also suffered persecution under ISIS but emerged from the genocide in a position of strength. There are often tensions between the Shabak and Christians, especially as the Shabak have moved into Christian areas in a sometimes forceful manner.

Separately, according to a report, Turkish airstrikes ostensibly targeting members of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) “impacted [several] villages” which are “home to Christian communities”: “Hundreds of Christian families who fled Mosul and the Nineveh Plains during the 2014 ISIS attacks now live in Zakho, one of the areas targeted by Turkey’s raids. Many of these Christians have been displaced once again.”

Syria: According to a June 17 report, an Aramean Christian woman “became terrified” when she discovered that two Kurdish militiamen had dug a tunnel that ended up in the backyard of her house. “Aramean Christians across Northeast Syria have been complaining more than once about this military strategy that is being employed by the PYD/YPG [People’s Kurdish Protection Unit’s] Kurds.” The brothers of the woman, “a respected deaconess in one of the local churches in Qamishli,” met with local Kurdish leaders in an effort to “get them to close the hole and find another tunnel exit.”

After the request was approved, one of the Kurdish representatives in Qamishli frightened the family, telling them: “These are our houses. In ten years, none of you will be left here and then your homes will be ours anyway.” This latest case has shocked the vulnerable Aramean woman who is afraid to stay at home alone and can’t sleep peacefully. The Arameans, who in the last years have been living under the Kurdish yoke in occupied Northeast Syria, have frequently been victims of the YPG’s scare tactics, intimidations, threats, oppression and (lethal) violence.

Commenting on these Kurdish tunnels that often presage the confiscation of Christian properties, a representative of the World Council of Arameans, said,

Everyone knows about it, but nobody knows whether or not a tunnel has been dug under their own house…. YPG Kurds target the native Arameans and their ancestral lands so that the latter will be turned into war zones from which the defenseless Christians will inevitably want to flee.

Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic. Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Previous Reports :

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Immigration #Persecution #Legal #News #Media #Travel #Politics #Religion #Genocide

18 notes · View notes

militant-holy-knight · 5 years

Link

There was something about Diyaa that his wife’s brothers didn’t like. He was a tyrant, they said, who, after 14 years of marriage, wouldn’t let their sister, Rana, 31, have her own mobile phone. He isolated her from friends and family, guarding her jealously. Although Diyaa and Rana were both from Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq, they didn’t know each other before their families arranged their marriage. It hadn’t gone especially well. Rana was childless, and according to the brothers, Diyaa was cheap. The house he rented was dilapidated, not fit for their sister to live in.

Qaraqosh is on the Nineveh Plain, a 1,500-square-mile plot of contested land that lies between Iraq’s Kurdish north and its Arab south. Until last summer, this was a flourishing city of 50,000, in Iraq’s breadbasket. Wheat fields and chicken and cattle farms surrounded a town filled with coffee shops, bars, barbers, gyms and other trappings of modern life.

Then, last June, ISIS took Mosul, less than 20 miles west. The militants painted a red Arabic ‘‘n,’’ for Nasrane, a slur, on Christian homes. They took over the municipal water supply, which feeds much of the Nineveh Plain. Many residents who managed to escape fled to Qaraqosh, bringing with them tales of summary executions and mass beheadings. The people of Qaraqosh feared that ISIS would continue to extend the group’s self-styled caliphate, which now stretches from Turkey’s border with Syria to south of Fallujah in Iraq, an area roughly the size of Indiana.

In the weeks before advancing on Qaraqosh, ISIS cut the city’s water. As the wells dried up, some left and others talked about where they might go. In July, reports that ISIS was about to take Qaraqosh sent thousands fleeing, but ISIS didn’t arrive, and within a couple of days, most people returned. Diyaa refused to leave. He was sure ISIS wouldn’t take the town.

A week later, the Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, whom the Iraqi government had charged with defending Qaraqosh, retreated. (‘‘We didn’t have the weapons to stop them,’’ Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the peshmerga, said later.) The city was defenseless; the Kurds had not allowed the people of the Nineveh Plain to arm themselves and had rounded up their weapons months earlier. Tens of thousands jammed into cars and fled along the narrow highway leading to the relative safety of Erbil, the Kurdish capital of Northern Iraq, 50 miles away.

Piling 10 family members into a Toyota pickup, Rana’s brothers ran, too. From the road, they called Diyaa repeatedly, pleading with him to escape with Rana. ‘‘She can’t go,’’ Diyaa told one of Rana’s brothers, as the brother later recounted to me. ‘‘ISIS isn’t coming. This is all a lie.’’

The next morning Diyaa and Rana woke to a nearly empty town. Only 100 or so people remained in Qaraqosh, mostly those too poor, old or ill to travel. A few, like Diyaa, hadn’t taken the threat seriously. One man passed out drunk in his backyard and woke the next morning to ISIS taking the town.

As Diyaa and Rana hid in their basement, ISIS broke into stores and looted them. Over the next two weeks, militants rooted out most of the residents cowering in their homes, searching house to house. The armed men roamed Qaraqosh on foot and in pickups. They marked the walls of farms and businesses ‘‘Property of the Islamic State.’’ ISIS now held not just Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, but also Ramadi and Fallujah. (During the Iraq War, the fighting in these three places accounted for 30 percent of U.S. casualties.) In Qaraqosh, as in Mosul, ISIS offered residents a choice: They could either convert or pay the jizya, the head tax levied against all ‘‘People of the Book’’: Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews. If they refused, they would be killed, raped or enslaved, their wealth taken as spoils of war.

No one came for Diyaa and Rana. ISIS hadn’t bothered to search inside their ramshackle house. Then, on the evening of Aug. 21, word spread that ISIS was willing to offer what they call ‘‘exile and hardship’’ to the last people in Qaraqosh. They would be cast out of their homes with nothing, but at least they would survive. A kindly local mullah was going door to door with the good news. Hoping to save Diyaa and Rana, their neighbors told him where they were hiding.

Diyaa and Rana readied themselves to leave. The last residents of Qaraqosh were to report the next morning to the local medical center, to receive ‘‘checkups’’ before being deported from the Islamic State. Everyone knew the checkups were really body searches to prevent residents from taking valuables out of Qaraqosh. Before ISIS let residents go — if they let them go — it was very likely they would steal everything they had, as residents heard they had done elsewhere.

Diyaa and Rana called their families to let them know what was happening. ‘‘Take nothing with you,’’ her brothers told Diyaa. But Diyaa, as usual, didn’t listen. He stuffed Rana’s clothes with money, gold, passports and their identity papers. Although she was terrified of being caught — she could be beheaded for taking goods from the Islamic State — Rana didn’t protest; she didn’t dare. According to her brothers, Diyaa could be violent. (Diyaa’s brother Nimrod disputed this, just as he does Diyaa’s alleged cheapness.)

At 7 the next morning, Diyaa and Rana made the five-minute walk from their home to Qaraqosh Medical Center Branch No. 2, a yellow building with red-and-green trim next to the city’s only mosque. As the crowd gathered, Diyaa phoned both his family and hers. ‘‘We’re standing in front of the medical center right now,’’ he said, as his brother-in-law recalled it. ‘‘There are buses and cars here. Thank God, they’re going to let us go.’’

It was a searing day. Temperatures reach as high as 110 degrees on the Nineveh Plain in summer. By 9 a.m., ISIS had separated men from women. Seated in the crowd, the local ISIS emir, Saeed Abbas, surveyed the female prisoners. His eyes lit on Aida Hana Noah, 43, who was holding her 3-year-old daughter, Christina. Noah said she felt his gaze and gripped Christina closer. For two weeks, she’d been at home with her daughter and her husband, Khadr Azzou Abada, 65. He was blind, and Aida decided that the journey north would be too hard for him. So she sent her 25-year-old son with her three other children, who ranged in age from 10 to 13, to safety. She thought Christina too young to be without her mother.

ISIS scanned the separate groups of men and women. ‘‘You’’ and ‘‘you,’’ they pointed. Some of the captives realized what ISIS was doing, survivors told me later, dividing the young and healthy from the older and weak. One, Talal Abdul Ghani, placed a final call to his family before the fighters confiscated his phone. He had been publicly whipped for refusing to convert to Islam, as his sisters, who fled from other towns, later recounted. ‘‘Let me talk to everybody,’’ he wept. ‘‘I don’t think they’re letting me go.’’ It was the last time they heard from him.

No one was sure where either bus was going. As the jihadists directed the weaker and older to the first of two buses, one 49-year-old woman, Sahar, protested that she’d been separated from her husband, Adel. Although he was 61, he was healthy and strong and had been held back. One fighter reassured her, saying, ‘‘These others will follow.’’ Sahar, Aida and her blind husband, Khadr, boarded the first bus. The driver, a man they didn’t know, walked down the aisle. Without a word, he took Christina from her mother’s arms. ‘‘Please, in the name of God, give her back,’’ Aida pleaded. The driver carried Christina into the medical center. Then he returned without the child. As the people in the bus prayed to leave town, Aida kept begging for Christina. Finally, the driver went inside again. He came back empty-handed.

Aida has told this story before with slight variations. As she, her husband and another witness recounted it to me, she was pleading for her daughter when the emir himself appeared, flanked by two fighters. He was holding Christina against his chest. Aida fought her way off the bus.

‘‘Please give me my daughter,’’ she said.

The emir cocked his head at his bodyguards.

‘‘Get on the bus before we kill you,’’ one said.

Christina reached for her mother.

‘‘Get on the bus before we slaughter your family,’’ he repeated.

As the bus rumbled north out of town, Aida sat crumpled in a seat next to her husband. Many of the 40-odd people on it began to weep. ‘‘We cried for Christina and ourselves,’’ Sahar said. The bus took a sharp right toward the Khazir River that marked an edge of the land ISIS had seized. Several minutes later, the driver stopped and ordered everyone off.

Led by a shepherd who had traveled this path with his flock, the sick and elderly descended and began to walk to the Khazir River. The journey took 12 hours.

The second bus — the one filled with the young and healthy — headed north, too. But instead of turning east, it turned west, toward Mosul. Among its captives was Diyaa. Rana wasn’t with him. She had been bundled into a third vehicle, a new four-wheel drive, along with an 18-year-old girl named Rita, who’d come to Qaraqosh to help her elderly father flee.

The women were driven to Mosul, where, the next day, Rana’s captor called her brothers. ‘‘If you come near her, I’ll blow the house up. I’m wearing a suicide vest,’’ he said. Then he passed the phone to Rana, who whispered, in Syriac, the story of what happened to her. Her brothers were afraid to ask any questions lest her answers make trouble for her. She said, ‘‘I’m taking care of a 3-year-old named Christina.’’

Most of Iraq’s Christians call themselves Assyrians, Chaldeans or Syriac, different names for a common ethnicity rooted in the Mesopotamian kingdoms that flourished between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers thousands of years before Jesus. Christianity arrived during the first century, according to Eusebius, an early church historian who claimed to have translated letters between Jesus and a Mesopotamian king. Tradition holds that Thomas, one of the Twelve Apostles, sent Thaddeus, an early Jewish convert, to Mesopotamia to preach the Gospel.

As Christianity grew, it coexisted alongside older traditions — Judaism, Zoroastrianism and the monotheism of the Druze, Yazidis and Mandeans, among others — all of which survive in the region, though in vastly diminished form. From Greece to Egypt, this was the eastern half of Christendom, a fractious community divided by doctrinal differences that persist today: various Catholic churches (those who look to Rome for guidance, and those who don’t); the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox (those who believe Jesus has two natures, human and divine, and those who believe he was solely divine); and the Assyrian Church of the East, which is neither Catholic nor Orthodox.

When the first Islamic armies arrived from the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century, the Assyrian Church of the East was sending missionaries to China, India and Mongolia. The shift from Christianity to Islam happened gradually. Much as the worship of Eastern cults largely gave way to Christianity, Christianity gave way to Islam. Under Islamic rule, Eastern Christians lived as protected people, dhimmi: They were subservient and had to pay the jizya, but were often allowed to observe practices forbidden by Islam, including eating pork and drinking alcohol. Muslim rulers tended to be more tolerant of minorities than their Christian counterparts, and for 1,500 years, different religions thrived side by side.

One hundred years ago, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War I ushered in the greatest period of violence against Christians in the region. The genocide waged by the Young Turks in the name of nationalism, not religion, left at least two million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks dead. Nearly all were Christian. Among those who survived, many of the better educated left for the West. Others settled in Iraq and Syria, where they were protected by the military dictators who courted these often economically powerful minorities.

From 1910 to 2010, the percentage of the Middle Eastern population that was Christian — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline; once 14 percent of the population, Christians now make up roughly 4 percent. (In Iran and Turkey, they’re all but gone.) In Lebanon, the only country in the region where Christians hold significant political power, their numbers have shrunk over the past century, to 34 percent from 78 percent of the population. Low birthrates have contributed to this decline, as well as hostile political environments and economic crisis. Fear is also a driver. The rise of extremist groups, as well as the perception that their communities are vanishing, causes people to leave.

For more than a decade, extremists have targeted Christians and other minorities, who often serve as stand-ins for the West. This was especially true in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee. ‘‘Since 2003, we’ve lost priests, bishops and more than 60 churches were bombed,’’ Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil, said. With the fall of Saddam Hussein, Christians began to leave Iraq in large numbers, and the population shrank to less than 500,000 today from as many as 1.5 million in 2003.

The Arab Spring only made things worse. As dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were toppled, their longstanding protection of minorities also ended. Now, ISIS is looking to eradicate Christians and other minorities altogether. The group twists the early history of Christians in the region — their subjugation by the sword — to legitimize its millenarian enterprise. Recently, ISIS posted videos delineating the second-class status of Christians in the caliphate. Those unwilling to pay the jizya tax or to convert would be destroyed, the narrator warned, as the videos culminated in the now-infamous scenes of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians in Libya being marched onto the beach and beheaded, their blood running into the surf.

The future of Christianity in the region of its birth is now uncertain. ‘‘How much longer can we flee before we and other minorities become a story in a history book?’’ says Nuri Kino, a journalist and founder of the advocacy group Demand for Action. According to a Pew study, Christians face religious persecution in more countries than any other religious group. ‘‘ISIL has put a spotlight on the issue,’’ says Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, whose parents are from the region and who advocates on behalf of Eastern Christians. ‘‘Christianity is under an existential threat.’’

One of the main pipelines for Christians fleeing the Middle East runs through Lebanon. This spring, thousands of Christians from villages in northeastern Syria along the Khabur River found shelter in Lebanon as they fled an ISIS assault in which 230 people were seized for ransom. This wasn’t the first time that members of this tight-knit community had been driven from their homes. Many of these villagers were descendants of those who, in 1933, fled Iraq after a massacre of Assyrian Christians left 3,000 dead in one day.

On a recent Saturday, 50 of these refugees gathered for a funeral at the Assyrian Church of the East in Beirut, which sits on the steep slope of Mount Lebanon, not far from a BMW-Mini Cooper dealership and a Miss Virgin Jeans shop. The priest, the Rev. Sargon Zoumaya, buttoned his black cassock over a blue clerical shirt as he prepared to officiate over the burial of Benjamin Ishaya, who arrived just months before, displaced from one of the villages ISIS attacked. (He had died of complications following a head wound inflicted by a jihadist.)

‘‘We’re afraid our whole society will vanish,’’ said Zoumaya, who left his Khabur River village more than a decade ago to study in Lebanon. He picked up his prayer book and headed downstairs to the parish house. The church was helping to care for 1,500 Syrian families. ‘‘It’s too much pressure on us, more than we can handle,’’ he said. The families didn’t want to live in the notoriously overcrowded Lebanese refugee camps that had filled with one-and-a-half million Syrians fleeing the civil war. They no longer wanted to live among Muslims. Instead they crammed into apartments with exorbitant rents that the church subsidized as best it could.

Inside the church, men and women sat in two separate circles. A young woman passed out Turkish coffee in paper cups. Waves of keening rose from the ring of women, led by Ishaya’s widow. Wearing an olive green suit, she sat at the head of the open coffin, weeping, as women touched her husband’s body. Nearby, her son, Bassam Ishaya, nursed two broken feet. He’d been trying to support his family by repairing couches until one dropped on him. The Ishaya family left Syria with nothing. ISIS, Bassam said, told them they ‘‘either had to pay the jizya, convert or be killed.’’ He pointed to a blue crucifix tattoo on his right arm. ‘‘Because of this, I had to wear long sleeves,’’ he said.

To escape, the Ishayas were airlifted from Al-Hasakah, a town in northeastern Syria, which had been under the joint control of the Assad government and the Kurds but has since largely fallen to ISIS, and flown 400 miles to Damascus. From there, they drove to the Lebanese border. Syrian Air charged $180 for the flights; Assad’s government charged $50 a person, the refugees at the funeral said.

Since the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Assad has allowed Christians to leave the country. Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, about 600,000, have found themselves with no choice but to flee the country, driven out by extremist groups like the Nusra Front and now ISIS. ‘‘As president, he made the sheep and the wolf walk together,’’ Bassam said. ‘‘We don’t care if he stays or goes, we just want security.’’ Assad has used the rise of ISIS to solidify his own support among those who remain, sowing the same fear among them that he tries to spread in the West: that he is the only thing standing in the way of an ISIS takeover. This argument has been largely effective. As Samy Gemayel, leader of the Kataeb party in Lebanon, said: ‘‘When Christians saw Christians being beheaded, those who saw Assad as the enemy chose the lesser of two evils. Assad was the diet version of ISIS.’’

Like most of the refugees in the parish house, Bassam wasn’t planning on returning to Syria. He was searching for a way to the West. His brother Yussef moved to Chicago two years earlier. He didn’t have a job yet, but his wife worked at Walmart. Maybe they would help. He wanted to leave like everyone else, although it would hasten the end of Christianity in Syria. No one would go home after what ISIS had done. ‘‘Christians will all leave,’’ he said. ‘‘What can I do? I have four kids, I can’t leave them here to die.’’

After his father’s coffin was sealed, Bassam and the rest of the male mourners filed out. As the women looked on, the men filled waiting cars and drove, past a cement factory, to a nearby graveyard. Zoumaya swung a censer of frankincense along the narrow pathway. But neither the smoke nor the wilting rose bushes could mask the reek of corpses. Behind the priest, Bassam hobbled on crutches. The mourners lifted the coffin into a wall of doors, which resembled the shelving units in a morgue. This was a pauper’s grave. Since the family couldn’t afford the fee, the church paid $500 to place the coffin here. In a few months, the body would be quietly burned, although cremation is anathema to Eastern Christian doctrine. The ashes would take up less space in this overcrowded city of the dead.

‘‘We ran from the war only to die in the street,’’ one mourner said.

Later, Zoumaya talked of his family members, who were among the 230 captured by ISIS. At noon, on the day ISIS arrived in his wife’s village, Zoumaya called his father-in-law to check in.

‘‘This is ISIS,’’ said the man who answered.

‘‘Please let my family go,’’ the priest begged. ‘‘They’ve done nothing to you. They’re not fighting.’’

‘‘These people belong to us now,’’ the man said. ‘‘Who is this calling?’’

Zoumaya hung up. He feared what ISIS might do if they knew who he was. But this was not the end of his communication with them; they sent him photographs via WhatsApp. He pulled out his phone to show them. Here was a jihadi on a motorcycle, grinning in front of the charred grocery store that belonged to his father. Here was a photo, before ISIS arrived, of a 3-month-old’s baptism. Here was a snapshot of the family dressed up for Somikka, Assyrian Halloween, during which adults don frightening costumes to scare children into fasting for Lent.

‘All these people are missing,’’ he said.

ISIS wants $23 million for these captives, $100,000 each, a sum no one can pay.

This spring the U.N. Security Council met to discuss the plight of Iraq’s religious minorities. ‘‘If we attend to minority rights only after slaughter has begun, then we have already failed,’’ Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for Human Rights, said. After the conference ended, there was mounting anger at American inaction. Although the airstrikes were effective, since October 2013, the United States has given just $416 million in humanitarian aid, which falls far short of what is needed. ‘‘Americans and the West were telling us they came to bring democracy, freedom and prosperity,’’ Louis Sako, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon who addressed the Security Council, wrote to me in a recent email. ‘‘What we are living is anarchy, war, death and the plight of three million refugees.’’

Of the 3.1 million displaced Iraqis, 85 percent are Sunnis. No one has suffered more at the hands of ISIS than fellow Muslims. Other religious minorities have been affected as well and in large numbers: the Yazidis, who were trapped on Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq last summer, as ISIS threatened them with genocide; as well as Shia Turkmen; Shabak; Kaka’i; and the Mandeans, who follow John the Baptist. ‘‘Everyone has seen the forced conversions, crucifixions and beheadings,’’ David Saperstein, the United States ambassador at large for religious freedom, said. ‘‘To see these communities, primarily Christians, but also the Yazidis and others, persecuted in such large numbers is deeply alarming.’’

It has been nearly impossible for two U.S. presidents — Bush, a conservative evangelical; and Obama, a progressive liberal — to address the plight of Christians explicitly for fear of appearing to play into the crusader and ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ narratives the West is accused of embracing. In 2007, when Al Qaeda was kidnapping and killing priests in Mosul, Nina Shea, who was then a U.S. commissioner for religious freedom, says she approached the secretary of state at the time, Condoleezza Rice, who told her the United States didn’t intervene in ‘‘sectarian’’ issues. Rice now says that protecting religious freedom in Iraq was a priority both for her and for the Bush administration. But the targeted violence and mass Christian exodus remained unaddressed. ‘‘One of the blind spots of the Bush administration was the inability to grapple with this as a direct byproduct of the invasion,’’ says Timothy Shah, the associate director of Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project.

More recently, the White House has been criticized for eschewing the term ‘‘Christian’’ altogether. The issue of Christian persecution is politically charged; the Christian right has long used the idea that Christianity is imperiled to rally its base. When ISIS massacred Egyptian Copts in Libya this winter, the State Department came under fire for referring to the victims merely as ‘‘Egyptian citizens.’’ Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, says, ‘‘When ISIS is no longer said to have religious motivations nor the minorities it attacks to have religious identities, the Obama administration’s caution about religion becomes excessive.’’

Last fall, Obama did refer to Christians and other religious minorities by name in a speech, saying, ‘‘we cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands.’’ When ISIS threatened to eradicate the Yazidis, ‘‘it was the United States that stepped in to beat back the militants,’’ Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the National Security Council, says. In northeastern Syria, where ISIS is still launching attacks against Assyrian Christian villages, the U.S. military recently come to their aid, Baskey added. Refugees are a thornier issue. Of the more than 122,000 Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States, nearly 40 percent already belong to oppressed minorities. Admitting more would be difficult. ‘‘There are limits to what the international community can do,’’ Saperstein said.

Eshoo, the Democratic congresswoman, is working to establish priority refugee status for minorities who want to leave Iraq. ‘‘It’s a hair ball,’’ she says. ‘‘The average time for admittance to the United States is more than 16 months, and that’s too long. Many will die.’’ But it can be difficult to rally widespread support. The Middle East’s Christians often favor Palestine over Israel. And because support of Israel is central to the Christian Right — Israel must be occupied by the Jews before Jesus can return — this stance distances Eastern Christians from a powerful lobby that might otherwise champion their cause. Recently, Ted Cruz admonished an audience of Middle Eastern Christians at an In Defense of Christians event in Washington, telling them that Christians ‘‘have no better ally than the Jewish state.’’ Cruz was booed.

The fate of Christians in the Middle East isn’t simply a matter of religion; it is also integral to what kinds of societies will flourish as the region’s map fractures. In Lebanon, for example, where Christians have always played a powerful role in government, they increasingly serve as a buffer between Sunni and Shia. For nearly 70 years, Lebanon was a proxy battleground for the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Across the region, that conflict is now secondary to the shifting tectonic plates of the Sunni-Shia divide, which threatens terrible bloodshed.

Earlier this year, Lebanon closed its borders to almost everyone escaping the war in Syria but made an exception for Christians fleeing ISIS. When the extremists attacked the villages along the Khabur River, the interior minister, Nouhad Machnouk, ordered the official in charge of the border to allow Christians to enter the country. ‘‘I can’t put this in writing,’’ the border official said. Machnouk replied, ‘‘O.K., say it aloud, word by word.’’

Machnouk told me this story on a recent evening. ‘‘They’re paying much, much, much more than others,’’ in both Syria and Iraq, he said. ‘‘They’re not Sunni and not Shia, but they’re paying more than both.’’ We sat in his airy office, housed in a former art school from the Ottoman era. It was decorated with his private collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including a carved basalt head with finely wrought curls. For the minister, a moderate Sunni, sheltering Christians is as much a sociopolitical imperative as a moral one.

In Lebanon, the tension between Sunni and Shia plays out in a system of political patronage, which has split the Christian community into two rival political parties, both born of the country’s 15-year-long civil war. The pro-Saudi Future movement, which consists of mainly Sunnis, supports the Christian leader Samir Geagea, who lives atop Mount Lebanon behind three check points, two X-ray machines and a set of steel doors. Hezbollah, which is Shia and backed by Iran, has been openly allied since 2006 with the Free Patriotic Movement (F.P.M.), a Christian Party headed by Michel Aoun. For Hezbollah, Christians offer an opportunity to forge an alliance with a fellow minority. (Of the world’s one and a half billion Muslims, only 10 to 20 percent are Shia.)

‘‘It’s a political game,’’ Alain Aoun, a member of Parliament for the F.P.M. and Michel Aoun’s nephew, told me. The emergence of ISIS has strengthened the alliance. ‘‘The Christians are happy to have anyone who can fight against I.S.’’ Hezbollah has paid young Christian men from Lebanon’s impoverished Bekaa Valley a one-time $500 to $2,000 fee to fight ISIS.

‘‘Christians here are making the same calculation that Obama does,’’ Hanin Ghaddar, the managing editor of NOW, a news website in Lebanon, said, referring to Obama’s willingness to support Iran as a bulwark against Sunni extremism. For many Christians in the Middle East, a Shia alliance offers a hope of survival, however slim. Ghaddar, an independent Shia, says that it is uncertain how these tenuous allegiances will play out. This spring, pro-Iranian forces of Hezbollah were battling Sunni extremists in Syria. No one knew who would prevail. ‘‘It’s like ‘Game of Thrones,’ ’’ she said. ‘‘We’re waiting for the snow to melt.’’

The front line against ISIS in Northern Iraq is marked by an earthen berm that runs for hundreds of miles over the Nineveh Plain. A string of Christian towns now stands empty, and the Kurdish forces occupy what, for thousands of years, was Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac land. In one, Telskuf, seized by ISIS last year, the main square is overgrown with brambles and thistles. It was once a thriving market town. Every Thursday, hundreds came to buy clothes, honey and vegetables. Telskuf was home to 7,000 people; now only three remain.

The Nineveh Plain Forces, a 500-member Assyrian Christian militia, patrols the town. The N.P.F. is one of five Assyrian militias formed during the past year after the rout of ISIS. It shares a double aim with two other militias, Dwekh Nawsha, an all-volunteer force of around 100, and the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, a battalion of more than 300: to help liberate Christian lands from ISIS and to protect their people, possibly as part of a nascent national guard, when they return home. The two other militias are the Syriac Military Council, which is fighting alongside the Kurds in northeastern Syria, and the Babylonian Brigades, which operate under Iraq’s Shia-dominated militias.

A few of these militias are aided by a handful of American, Canadian and British citizens, who, frustrated with their governments’ lack of response to ISIS, have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight on their own. Some come in the name of fellow Christians. Some come to relive their roles in the United States invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan — or to make amends for them. One American named Matthew VanDyke, the founder of Sons of Liberty International, a security company, has provided free training for the N.P.U. and is now about to work with a second militia, Dwekh Nawsha. VanDyke, who is 36, traveled to Libya in 2011 to fight against Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces; he was captured and spent 166 days in solitary confinement before escaping and returning to combat. He has no formal military training, but since last fall, he has brought American veterans to Iraq to help the N.P.U., including James Halterman, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, who found the group on the Internet after watching a segment about Westerners fighting ISIS on Fox News. The United States government does not support groups like VanDyke’s. ‘‘Americans who have traveled to Iraq to fight are not part of U.S. efforts in the region,’’ Joseph Pennington, the consul general in Erbil, says. ‘‘We wish they would not come here.’’

In Iraq, the militias operate at the front only with the approval of the Kurdish peshmerga, who are using the fight against ISIS to expand their territory into the Nineveh Plain, long a disputed territory between Arabs and Kurds. Even to travel 1,000 yards between bases and forward posts, the Christian militias must ask the Kurds for permission. The Kurds are looking to integrate all the Christian militias into their force; they have succeeded with the N.P.F. and two others. But the N.P.U. remains wary. They fear that the Kurds are using the Christian cause to seize territory for a greater Kurdistan. And because the Kurdish forces abandoned them as ISIS approached, the militias want the right to protect their own people. For now, they make do with the help they can find. Romeo Hakari, the head of the N.P.F., said, ‘‘We want U.S. trainers, but we can’t even afford to buy weapons.’’ After his militia purchased 20 AK-47s in an open market in Erbil, the Kurds gave them 100 more.

Other than a daily mortar or two launched by ISIS from a village a mile and a half away, the area the N.P.U. patrolled was a sleepy target. After coalition airstrikes pushed ISIS out of Telskuf last summer, the group retreated about a mile and a half to the southwest. Beyond a bulldozed trench and a line of burlap sandbags littered with sunflower-seed shells, 12 black flags fluttered over a village. Three weeks earlier, at 4:20 a.m., two suicide bombers carrying a ladder to place over the trench attacked this forward post. The suicide attack was foiled after the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS launched airstrikes, which killed 13 ISIS fighters, Manaf Yussef, a Kurdish security official in charge of this front, said. ‘‘Without airstrikes, we’d lose,’’ he said. Minutes later, a high whistle signaled an incoming ISIS shell, which set fire to a nearby wheat field. The land is sere due to a drought.

As a column of smoke from the daily ISIS shell billowed into the blue sky, five Assyrian fighters belonging to the Nineveh Plain Forces went from house to house to evacuate the last residents of Telskuf — three old women. When the N.P.F. commander, Safaa Khamro, pushed open the door of the first house, Christina Jibbo Kakhosh began to cry. She was 91.

‘‘I have no running water,’’ she said. Less than four feet tall, she peered up at Khamro through bottle-thick glasses.

‘‘I fixed it for you yesterday,’’ Khamro said.

‘‘I forgot,’’ she said. She shuffled back inside and beckoned him to follow. Her refrigerator was flung open; because there was no electricity, it served as a pantry. A half-eaten jar of tahini, a lighter and a pair of scissors sat on a table in front of the mattress on which she slept. When she heard her visitors were American, she said: ‘‘Three of my children are in America. Only one has called me.’’

Khamro tried to persuade her to come to a house near the base where she would be safer. ‘‘It has satellite TV,’’ he said. She packed a small satchel and left with the patrol. ‘‘That’s my uncle’s house,’’ one Assyrian fighter said as he passed a padlocked gate. ‘‘He’s in Australia now.’’ The patrol passed St. Jacob’s Church, where ISIS fighters had destroyed a porcelain statue of Jesus, which was now missing its face. An icon of a martyr having his fingers cut off by Tamerlane, who massacred tens of thousands of Assyrian Christians during the 14th century, hung on the wall.

Nearby, the N.P.F. had replaced the cross that ISIS fighters filmed themselves hurling down. Khamro was a politician in Telskuf before ISIS invaded. He owned one of the 480 now-shuttered shops, a boutique that sold women’s and children’s clothes. He’d sent his wife and children to Al Qosh, 10 miles to the north, a safer Christian city.

Khamro turned off the main drag and into a warren of overgrown pathways. He stopped before a chicken-wire awning, calling out ‘‘Auntie’’ to Kamala Karim Shaya, who sat on her front stoop, a kerchief tied over her thick white ponytail. When she learned that Khamro had come to move her out of her clay home, she began to scream: ‘‘Even if my father stands up in his grave, I will not leave this house. No, no, no, no, no, never, never, never,’’ she shouted. Khamro, who refused to move her by force, had no choice but to pass on.

Even if ISIS is defeated, the fate of religious minorities in Syria and Iraq remains bleak. Unless minorities are given some measure of security, those who can leave are likely to do so. Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute, a conservative policy center, says that the situation has grown so dire that Iraqi Christians must either be allowed full residency in Kurdistan, including the right to work, or helped to leave. Others argue that it is essential that minorities have their own autonomous region. Exile is a death knell for these communities, activists say. ‘‘We’ve been here as an ethnicity for 6,000 years and as Christians for 1,700 years,’’ says Dr. Srood Maqdasy, a member of the Kurdish Parliament. ‘‘We have our own culture, language and tradition. If we live within other communities, all of this will be dissolved within two generations.’’

The practical solution, according to many Assyrian Christians, is to establish a safe haven on the Nineveh Plain. ‘‘If the West could take in so many refugees and the U.N.H.C.R. handle an operation like that, then we wouldn’t ask for a permanent solution,’’ says Nuri Kino, of A Demand for Action. ‘‘But the most realistic option is returning home.’’

‘‘We don’t have time to wait for solutions,’’ said the Rev. Emanuel Youkhana, the head of Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq. ‘‘For the first time in 2,000 years, there are no church services in Mosul. The West comes up with one solution by granting visas to a few hundred people. What about a few hundred thousand?’’ If Iraq devolves into three regions — Sunnis, Shia and Kurds — there could be a fourth for minorities. ‘‘Iraq is a forced marriage between Sunni, Shia, Kurds and Christians, and it failed,’’ Youkhana said. ‘‘Even I, as a priest, favor divorce.’’

Proponents say a safe haven wouldn’t require an international force or a no-fly zone, neither of which is likely to find much support in the United States or among its allies. U.S. policy does play a role. When Congress was asked to approve $1.6 billion in aid for Iraqi forces fighting ISIS — the Iraqi Army, the Kurds and the Sunni tribes — it amended the bill to explicitly include local forces on the Nineveh Plain, but also passed legislation directing the State Department to implement a safe haven there. Ultimately, however, the responsibility lies with the Iraqis. Pennington, the consul general, said, ‘‘The creation of a safe haven in the Nineveh Province would be an idea for the Iraqi Parliament in accordance with the Iraqi Constitution.’’

Tarek Mitri, a former Lebanese minister and a former special representative to the U.N. secretary general for Libya, says that his impression in speaking to officials in the White House ‘‘is that Obama is in a withdrawal mood. He thinks that he was elected to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq and to make a deal with Iran. If this is the mood, then we shouldn’t expect much or ask much from the Americans.’’ Baskey, of the National Security Council, counters that ‘‘rather than withdrawing, the president and this administration have, in fact, remained deeply engaged, building and leading a coalition of some 60 nations to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.’’

The last time Rana, one of the women taken by ISIS from Qaraqosh, was able to speak to her family by phone was in September. She told them what had befallen Rita and Christina. Rita had been given as a slave to a powerful member of ISIS; Christina was given to a family to be raised as a Muslim.

Rana said little about her own circumstances, and her family didn’t ask. To be honest, they weren’t sure they wanted to know what ISIS had done to her.

For months now, the phone Rana used has been switched off. ‘‘There’s word they’re still alive,’’ Rabee Mano, 36, a refugee from Qaraqosh who runs an underground railroad out of the Islamic State, told me one recent evening over beer and kebabs. ‘‘She’s been ‘married’ to a powerful guy in ISIS,’’ he added, as he sat in the garden at the Social Academic Center in Ankawa, a Christian suburb of Erbil. At the next table, three gleeful men poured straight vodka into plastic cups. Over the past year, Ankawa has swelled by 60,000 as refugees have poured in.

For nearly a year, Mano has been trying to buy freedom for Rana, Rita and Christina from ISIS. Through his network of contacts, a greedy ISIS member, friends in Arab villages and a brave taxi driver, Mano has paid to free 45 people. The haggling is made easier by the fact that ISIS members frequently trade women among themselves, so the buying and selling of people doesn’t raise suspicion. This work has cost him $10,000, which he raised by opening a carwash. He sent $800 to a member of ISIS, saying he would send more when the women and the child made it to safety. But the man had done nothing of what he promised.

Before Mano fled his hometown last August, he dealt in commercial real estate. ‘‘You can see my buildings from Google Earth,’’ he said. At the picnic table, he pulled an expired Arizona driver’s license from his wallet. It was a temporary license from 2011, the year he came to the United States and tried to buy 48 apartments. The deal fell through, so he went home; now his passport had expired. He lost about $1.5 million, he said.

He longed to return to the Nineveh Plain. ‘‘Even though all of my money is in the garbage, I’ll be O.K. if we get this safe haven,’’ he said. ‘‘If it takes too long, we’ll be annihilated.’’ It was all he thought about. ‘‘Are we going home or not?’’ he asked. ‘‘This safe haven is the last chance we have, or Christianity will be finished in Iraq.’’

Earlier, a text message came in from Mosul. One of his contacts was having trouble locating a woman named Nabila, who was ready to be smuggled to safety. Mano had instructed her to hang a black cloth in her window so that her rescuer could find the right house. But the wind had blown the cloth to the ground, and now her would-be rescuer couldn’t tell where she was being held. They would have to try again. ‘‘I’ll tell her to hang a blanket,’’ Mano said. They would find her, he hoped, if the blanket held its weight against the wind.

#Christianity #terrorism #genocide #Martyrs #politics

3 notes · View notes