Usama Matar, an optometrist who has lived in Russia since 1983, said he did not harbor any illusions about Russia’s motives for defending Syrian Christians like himself, whom he called “small coins in a big game.” But he said there were few international players taking notice of Eastern Christians at all.
In an aside, the article mentions that 2/3 of Iraq's 1.5 million Christians left the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein.“The West is pursuing its own interests; they are indifferent to our fate,” he said. “I am not justifying the Assad regime — it is dictatorial, we know this, it is despotic, I understand. But these guys, they don’t even hide their intention to build an Islamic state and their methods of battle, where they just execute people on the streets. That’s the opposition, not just the authorities. And we are between two fires.”
It appears that even today mass human rights violations will be largely ignored if the people whose rights (and lives etc.) are being violated do not align with the interests of powerful "geopolitical actors" such as the United States and the European Union.
Perhaps Hillary Clinton has mentioned the problem of Christians in Syria. If so, this has escaped my attention.
The dynamic evidence page
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