A waiting game for migrants in France

PARIS—It’s near freezing when tents begin appearing on Avénue du Président Wilson. Migrants are getting ready for another November night. Their evening ritual creates an impromptu camp in a pedestrianized median on the north side of the city, near the Metro at Porte de la Chapelle.

I greet many of the men as I trail along behind a more expert friend who visits this spot weekly. She is Egyptian and comes like a sister, in the name of Christ, herself a stranger in France.

Some men are waiting to be processed as asylum seekers. Others want to avoid deportation after having asylum claims denied. They are among thousands who have inundated Paris, up to 80 per day. Across Europe, more than 178,000 migrants sought new homes in 2017. Most come from Muslim-majority nations in Africa.

Mahamat is angry. Murderous even. He tells me he plans to kill three people the next day. “They treated me like I’m a slave!” he roars.

Mahamat comes from a town in Chad where I once rented a house, planning to work with a nongovernmental organization there. My move never happened, but my exposure to the place means we have some shared spaces, shared memories, and that strikes a chord. Mahamat talks, and I listen. Telling me his ordeal seems to lower his rage. He smiles at my exhortation to patience, and I’m reassured he will not kill anyone.

We discuss God’s power to change things—to order events so Mahamat might be allowed to stay in France. Though feeling ill-treated here, he faces worse trials at home, and his journey isn’t over yet. “I spent 47 nights sleeping along the road to get to Paris. And now they say I have to return to Italy—because that’s where I entered Europe and got fingerprinted,” he said.

But there is no going back home for Mahamat. Like most in the camp, he says he came to provide for his family. He will risk living illegally if the asylum papers never come. Out of 87,775 seekers, France gave asylum to just one-third in 2016.

Samir Salibi believes these migrants represent a huge opportunity. Last year the IT engineer began a ministry called @home to “form a team of disciples that will impact this community.” He himself came to faith in Christ two decades ago as an immigrant to France. He now mobilizes volunteers to distribute food, blankets, and other items. The volunteers also invite migrants to worship services and Bible study and into people’s homes. And they come. Samir aims to integrate refugees into society through French classes. But he told me @home is really about being a church family where refugees can feel at home and loved.

As I leave, I consider what will happen to the men at Porte de la Chapelle—and others already here for months or years. The UN has proposed funding migrants’ return home from awful conditions in Libya, where some are enslaved, before they even attempt the perilous trip to Europe.

Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, said the continent needs a strategy for the nearly 6 million migrants now waiting in countries bordering the Mediterranean. But the November summit of more than 80 African Union and European Union leaders, held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, did not produce a clear strategy for meeting the immense challenge that @home volunteers are tackling one person at a time.

One boy’s Christmas wish for peace in Iraq

Christmas will be extra special for 13-year-old Noeh and his family this year. Like thousands of other Iraqi Christians, his family of eight had to flee Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. This Christmas is the first they’ll spend back in their hometown of Karemles, east of Mosul.

Noeh’s Christmas wish is that he and “all the other Christian children in Iraq will get to celebrate Christmas in peace and not be afraid.”

Late one night in 2014, priests knocked on doors warning that ISIS was coming. Noeh’s family spent hours on a dust-choked road, clogged with others in flight, listening to gunfire. They lived in a camp for internally displaced people near Erbil, in the Kurdistan region, for three years.

They returned to Karemles this summer. Noeh said he was very happy to go home again, but when he saw the rubble and destruction everywhere and his own house burned out he was “heartbroken.” In spite all they’ve endured, his family and many other returning Iraqis are hopefully looking forward and asking for help to rebuild in their homeland.

They want to live in peace and dignity and, as Noeh put it, “for life to go back to normal.”

That hope for the future brought Noeh and his father, Haitham to the United States last week to deliver an Open Doors Petition to the United Nations. More than 800,000 people signed the “Hope for the Middle East” petition on behalf of the Middle East’s persecuted Christians. They also met and shared their story with leaders in Washington, D.C., including Vice President Mike Pence. —Julia A. Seymour

Justice in Congo

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo sentenced 12 members of a militia group to life in prison for raping 37 toddlers and young girls. The landmark ruling comes in a country where dozens of militia groups operate and sexual crimes mostly go unpunished.

The court convicted 10 of the men of crimes against humanity, including murder and rape, and two others of membership in an armed group. The militia fighters belonged to the group called The Army of Jesus (Djeshi ya Yesu). The prosecution said the group’s leader, provincial parliament member Frederic Batumike, hired a traditional medicine practitioner who told the fighters that raping young children would protect them from enemies. Between 2013 and 2016, militiamen abducted nearly 50 children—some as young as 18 months—from their homes at night and raped them near their homes in Kavumu.

Karen Naimer, who worked with a group that gathered evidence of the rapes, told The Guardian the case sets a new pattern. “It’s unprecedented, for who Batumike was: A very powerful provincial MP with his group and his financial control,” Naimer said. “And the collaboration between civil society, doctors, and police will hopefully set precedents.” —Onize Ohikere

Report: U.S. soldier killed in Niger died while fighting

An American soldier who died in an October ambush in Niger was not captured by the enemy, according to a military investigation obtained by the Associated Press. Sgt. La David Johnson’s death raised concerns after rescue teams found his body nearly a mile away from the scene of the ambush two days after the Oct. 4 attack. Johnson belonged to a 12-member Army Special Forces unit that accompanied 30 Nigerien soldiers when as many as 50 militants attacked them. Four U.S. soldiers, including Johnson, and four Nigerien troops died in the attack. Officials said Johnson was returning fire as he and two Nigerien soldiers tried to escape, but the attackers’ bullets struck him as many as 18 times. Johnson was found under a thick shrub, where he tried to take cover. Investigators found no signs that the attackers tried to take him prisoner or shot him at close range. The final report will be released next month. —O.O.

Nigeria rounds up extremists

The Nigerian army said it captured more than 400 people with connections to the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram during an operation across the Lake Chad Basin. Army spokesman Col. Onyema Nwachukwu said the military launched the two-week air and ground offensive to clear out the remaining insurgents from the region. Nwachukwu said the army captured 167 militants after raiding their hideouts and rescued some 67 women and 173 children identified as members of the insurgents’ families. He said the troops captured another 53 insurgents in the northern parts of Borno state during an earlier operation. The military will hand over the women and children to authorities at camps for internally displaced persons after they complete preliminary investigations, Nwachukwu said. Boko Haram lost its stronghold in Nigeria’s Northeast, but the group continues to carry out suicide attacks, mostly by abducted and indoctrinated women and children. —O.O.

EU recognizes Venezuela’s opposition

The European Union awarded its Sakharov Prize for human rights to Venezuela’s democratic opposition and political prisoners. The European Parliament said the award recognizes the courage of students and politicians who fight for freedom in the face of the repressive government. Earlier in April, opposition politicians and supporters launched monthslong antigovernment protests that turned violent, killing more than 125 people. President Nicolas Maduro, who assumed power in 2013, has denied he is holding political prisoners and instead accused them of violence and plotting coups. Julio Borges, one of the Sakharov Prize laureates, said the opposition will continue to fight for democracy. “In the next few months, there should be a presidential election, and we ask Europe and the free world to pay full attention,” he said. —O.O.