refugees
Lancaster Welcomes Refugees
In September 2019, Welcoming America, an NGO that encourages communities to embrace immigrants and refugees, designated Lancaster as a “certified welcoming city.” It became the first place in Pennsylvania to be so named. A news story in October 2017 indicated that for a long time Lancaster has welcomed refugees and others who are different, a […]
Mbuti Refugees
The Mbuti are suffering more than ever from rampaging armies, constant attacks on their villages, and incessant warfare in the forests of the northeastern DR Congo where they live. Or used to live. A news report posted on August 24 on the website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes the depredations the […]
Manitoba Hutterites Sponsor Muslim Refugees
A Syrian refugee family that moved to Canada in 2016 and the Hutterite family that sponsored them have become close friends, according to a CBC news story last week. Reyad Alhamud, the father in the Syrian family, told the reporter that he was impressed when he first met his Hutterite sponsors by the many similarities […]
Lancaster County Exhibits an Amish Spirit
Rick Gray, Mayor of the city of Lancaster in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, said that welcoming refugees is a way of supporting religious diversity and toleration. That attitude is “in [the city’s] genes,” according to Mr. Gray. Last week he explained to a reporter from Deutsche Welle, the prominent international German media organization, that refugees are […]
The Friendship of Hutterites and Syrians
Last year a Hutterite colony in Manitoba decided to sponsor a Syrian refugee family and they have been rewarded with a warm friendship that has rapidly grown stronger. A news report published last week on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told the engaging story of the […]
Will Violence in Kashmir Threaten the Peace in Ladakh?
“Over the past few weeks, six people have died, with hundreds injured, during the worst sectarian rioting in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in decades.” That news report opening sentence, written eight years ago about strife in Kashmir, could be repeated today except that the numbers of casualties are higher this time. And […]
Mbuti Refugees Flee Threats of Violence
A group of Mbuti have left their forest homes and taken refuge in a primary school in Oicha, in eastern DR Congo, where locals resent them for interrupting classes for the kids. The 60 or so Mbuti fled their forest homeland due to the depredations of the Allied Democratic Forces—National Army for the Liberation of […]
New Organization Seeks to Help Mbuti
People living in the greater St. Louis area will have the opportunity, in two weeks, to help raise funds to support Mbuti education, resettlement, and small business projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A charitable organization called the Partnership for Indigenous Peoples (PIPES) International announced on Craigslist that it is holding a sale of […]
Mbuti in a Squalid Refugee Camp
Deodat Mukankusi told a reporter, “we fled our small village in the woods when men carrying weapons invaded it.” She and about 800 other Mbuti have been forced by the seemingly endless fighting in their original home, the Ituri Forest, to migrate to a refugee camp at Kanyaruchinya, south of Goma, in South Kivu Province […]
Mbuti Refugee Stories
“We are like birds,” said the Mbuti woman. “Today we are here, but tomorrow we will move again. Even when someone dies, we have trouble finding a place to bury him.” Ragi Ngenderezi Abulengu was speaking about her life in the Mugunga Refugee camp, on the outskirts of the city of Goma, in eastern Democratic […]
