Lord Carey: 'The British government is not just breaking its manifesto pledge to look after Christian refugees, it also appears to be breaking the law' Credit: Greg Blatchford /Alamy Live News
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Olivia
Rudgard, 13 April 2017
Lord
Carey claimed that "politically correct" officials were
"institutionally biased" against Christian refugees, who are
underrepresented in the numbers being moved to the UK.
His
comments came as Russian and American diplomats agreed to restore dialogue over
the crisis in Syria following a week of escalating tensions that ended in
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin exchanging barely veiled insults.
Rex
Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister, said both countries would back a UN investigation into last week’s
deadly poison gas attack in the country's northwestern Idlib province.
The
statements came after marathon talks in Moscow which included a two-hour
discussion in which Mr Tillerson tried to persuade Russian president Vladimir
Putin to abandon support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Figures
show that less than 1 per cent of the Syrian refugees resettled under a
flagship Government scheme in the third quarter of last year were
Christians.
Lord
Carey said: “In the run-up to Easter British taxpayers will be appalled by this
institutional bias against Christians by politically correct officials.
"In
this the British government is not just breaking its manifesto pledge to look
after Christian refugees, it also appears to be breaking the law.”
His
view is supported by a legal opinion from a human rights barrister
which suggests that Syrian Christians are subject to "indirect
discrimination" under European human rights laws.
Christians
have been targeted by Isil in Syria alongside other minority groups including
Yazidis and Shia Muslims.
Members
of these groups have been killed, tortured and driven from their
homes.
But
figures from Christian charity Barnabas Fund show that the Government's
Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, which resettles refugees from Syria, has
accepted a tiny number of Christians since September 2015.
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