The Archbishop of York has urged the British government to open the country’s doors to Christians fleeing persecution in Iraq and Syria. Speeking to the BBC Radio One’s Sunday Morning Live program on 1 September 2014, the Most Rev. John Sentamu urged Prime Minister David Cameron to “please act quickly, because we may end up with a Rwanda … where people are killed in huge, huge numbers.” As of the beginning of September the UK had offered asylum to only 50 refugees fleeing the Islamic State (ISIS). However over the past year it had given asylum to 3,000 Muslim and Christian Syrians fleeing the civil war in that country. Dr. Sentamu’s call came at the end of a week-long fast and vigil, prayer on the hour every hour from six in the morning to six in the evening. ISIS has “already shown their capacity to be bloodthirsty. The beheading should tell us that they are a ruthless group of people, and somehow they’ve got to be stopped. And if you don’t stop them, you may end up with a genocide,” the archbishop said.
