Susan Korah
Susan Korah is an Ottawa-based journalist. She has a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University and a special interest in freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression. She is a Suriani, an Orthodox Christian of the Syriac/Aramaic rite.
Bio last updated February 4th, 2022.
Articles by Susan Korah
The High C Campaign Against COVID-19
By Susan Korah
May 22, 2020
Susan Korah introduces Convivium readers to an Ottawa-based Polish opera star who has lent her voice to better pandemic communication with the world’s disadvantaged.
Now in lockdown with her family at her home in Ottawa, the charismatic diva has lent her voice to an international COVID-19 information campaign designed to address a serious gap in public health communications around the world Using her acting skills and her beautifully modulated speaking voice, Maria joins other well-known personalities such as musicians and TV presenters to deliver important COVID-19 information in a manner that would reach some of the most marginalized populations in the world—asylum seekers, refugees, migrant workers and others who live in the poorest neighbourhoods of many of the world’s major cities The TellCorona campaign, which could be used in Canada as well as any other immigrant-receiving country in the world, is the brainchild of Nuri Kino of Sweden, my friend, journalistic colleague and fellow-soldier in the ongoing battle against Christian persecution
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Celebrating Nurses from Crimea to COVID-19
Susan Korah
April 17, 2020
This May marks the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale and the start of a nursing-led health care revolution, reports Convivium contributor Susan Korah.
It is an international NGO established to “honour the legacy of Florence Nightingale and other nurses and healthcare workers who have shown, by their example, how their actions contribute significantly to a peaceful, prosperous and healthy world Deva-Marie Beck, Canadian Director of the NGO, Nightin...
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You’re a Refugee. Now You Face COVID-19.
Susan Korah
March 24, 2020
Refugees, who face impossible situations even in better times, are being pushed beyond human endurance by the coronavirus pandemic, Susan Korah reports.
Bhatti—brother of Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti who was gunned down in cold blood nine years ago for defending the rights of Christians and other minorities in that country—explains the tragic end to Mariam’s story: Caught by Thailand’s immigration police and locked up in the notorious Immigration Deten...
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Honouring Women Survivors of Violence and Genocide
Susan Korah
March 9, 2020
Many Western women mark International Women’s Day by rungs on the status ladder, but elsewhere being female and staying alive is the ultimate victory, writes regular contributor Susan Korah.
Both El-Shafie and Nuri Kino, founder and leader of A Demand for Action, a Sweden-based NGO that advocates for Middle Eastern minorities and provides relief to refugees in Lebanon and Syria, agree that the war and genocidal campaigns affect women in a particularly intense way Stern said the number o...
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Restraining the Genocidal Hand
Susan Korah
February 18, 2020
A victory for Rohingya refugees at the International Court of Justice is a small but crucial step in the long march against genocide, contributor Susan Korah reports.
With the ICJ ruling on the Rohingyas, the international community has taken a small step forward, but has a million miles to go before the world’s genocide victims can wake up from their long, dark night of terror and despair to the light of peace, justice and hope. Kyle Matthews, executive director...
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Canada’s Darkness and Light in Iran
Susan Korah
January 15, 2020
Susan Korah finds Canadians of Iranian origin heartened by responses to the downing of Flight 752 – but critical of Ottawa’s approach broader to Tehran.
The second thread that emerges from this multi-stranded story is that all this gratitude and appreciation has not muted the criticism of some of Iranian Canadians for Canada’s weak-kneed handling of its relations with the Islamic Republic, and its failure to stand up to the regime, which is notoriou...
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Miracle on the Gaza Strip
Susan Korah
December 23, 2019
Thanks to activist groups, 50 Palestinian Christians will join family in the West Bank for Christmas. In the fraught area where Christ was born, that is a small miracle, Susan Korah writes.
The Israeli government, citing reasons of national security, has imposed severe travel restrictions on residents of the Gaza Strip, a narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean coast, controlled by Hamas and separated by 115 km from the West Bank, also considered to be part of the Palestinian Territ...
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A Journey to the Bleeding Heartland
Susan Korah
November 15, 2019
In a monumental trip through the Middle East, Susan Korah finds resolve to continue advocating for an end to persecution of Christians.
The nearly 2000-year old Syriac Orthodox Church of India, in which I was raised, is an integral part of the ancient Syriac Christian denomination despite the geographic distance from its centres in the Middle East to Kerala, a province on the southwestern coast of India Wearing the distinctive black...
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Syria Hits Situation Critical
Susan Korah
October 28, 2019
Susan Korah says the time for Canada to act is close to half-past too late for Syria’s suffering.
Driven by unshakeable faith in God and an unflinching determination to help Christians and other Middle Eastern minorities such as Yazidis and Mandaens, Kino and his volunteers coordinate their humanitarian aid efforts in partnership with the Syriac League, a Beirut-based non-profit organization tha...
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Honouring Shahbaz Bhatti, Servant of God
Susan Korah
September 9, 2019
Convivium contributor Susan Korah says recognizing the Pakistani martyr by naming a park after him is but a first step in fulfilling the legacy of his fight for religious freedom.
The Canadian chapter of International Christian Voice hosted the event to recognize the contributions of religious minorities to Pakistan and also to emphasize that Canadians have a role to play in addressing the contrast between the dream of Pakistan’s founder, and the nightmare of religious persec...
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What We Owe the Victims of ISIS
Susan Korah
August 21, 2019
The Yazidi people of the Middle East deserve justice and respect, not just sympathy or pity, for fighting so valiantly with the West, writes Convivium contributor Susan Korah.
With the added lustre of support from Amal Clooney, the glamorous, brilliantly articulate international human rights lawyer (who has taken on the cause of Yazidi women victims of human trafficking) and her own Nobel prize win, Murad has an undeniable star quality, Clarfield said They include a progr...
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Is Canada Deaf to Religious Persecution?
Susan Korah
July 30, 2019
In a world awakening to the catastrophe of anti-faith violence, Canada has apparently hit the snooze button on the alarm, reports Convivium contributor Susan Korah.
“The dissolution of the Office of Religious Freedom (held by Andrew Bennett under the previous Conservative government) damaged Canada’s credibility at a time when we were establishing ourselves as international leaders in religious freedom, and failure to acknowledge specifically that Christians fa...
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Following The Yellow Arrows
Susan Korah
July 2, 2019
Eighty-year-old Betty Hope Gittens walked the Camino with a God-given strength and the assurance that He would be with her through every step of the way – a journey she compares to walking the way of God’s will for her life.
Rudy Gittens, turned their Ottawa home into a place of loving care for her aging parents and an aunt Her journey is a metaphor for her own life journey, which has always been guided by faith, hope and love Powered by the unshakable faith she acquired growing up in a Christian family, she walked the ...
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Tiny Taiwan Stands Up to Anti-Faith Tyranny
Susan Korah
June 18, 2019
In a week when Quebec has passed into law its oppressive Bill 21, Convivium contributor Susan Korah argues all eyes in Canada should be on Taiwan’s unfailing support for full religious freedom.
He probably would have been ecstatic had he been present at the second event, the Taiwan International Religious Freedom Forum, co-hosted by the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, and several Taiwanese and international NGOs The second conference concluded with a group of religious and civil society le...
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Cracks in Canada’s Media Freedom
Susan Korah
May 6, 2019
The good news, Convivium contributor Susan Korah reports, is Canadian journalists aren’t murdered like their global colleagues. The bad news is subtle intimidation and harassment that lets the powerful keep their secrets.
However, Canadian journalists are not free from more subtle forms of intimidation and harassment, even though our politicians routinely sing the praises of press freedom as a cornerstone of democracy, and smugly criticize foreign countries where journalists are jailed or gunned down for doing their ...
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Speaking of Christchurch
Susan Korah
April 15, 2019
Marking the month’s passage since Muslims at prayer were attacked and murdered in New Zealand’s largest city, Convivium contributor Susan Korah hopes it will provoke a common outcry against the violence that afflicts all faith communities.
The world would become a Utopia, and people of diverse faiths, or no faith at all, would live in peace, if all political and faith leaders, media organizations and ordinary citizens followed the example of Prime Minister Ardern and the people of New Zealand; if they would all say “You, you’re us,” a...
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Refugees By Any Name
Susan Korah
February 25, 2019
Canadian Elizabeth Woods is leading a Jesuit Refugee Service urban support program in Jordan, writes Convivium contributor Susan Korah. In the spirit of accompanying displaced people on their journey, this service offers personalized services and visits with follow-ups to refugee families.
The problem, Woods told Convivium, is that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Jordan is no longer issuing official refugee status to all refugees The Canadian leader of a Jesuit support program for refugees and displaced people in Jordan wants Ottawa to stop demanding the designation...
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From Nightmare to Nobel for Nadia Murad
Susan Korah
November 21, 2018
Convivium contributor Susan Korah traces the ascent of the young Yazidi woman whose escape from horrifying sex slavery at the hands of ISIS has brought her a date in December where she’ll be given the Nobel Prize in the presence of the King of Sweden.
Abbas and Murad were among several thousand survivors flown into Germany through a program established in 2014 for Yazidi victims of ISIS atrocities I have never met Nadia Murad, but I came close to hearing of her experience first-hand when I met and interviewed one of her fellow Yazidi survivors, F...
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Parliament without a Resolution
Susan Korah
November 12, 2018
Convivium contributor Susan Korah reflects on the Parliament of the World’s Religions that drew an estimated 10,000 people to Toronto last week. What, she wonders, is the benefit for those outside the religious tent or, worse, those who fall prey to the darker side of faith?
But the question remains: how can these messages reach and touch the hearts and minds of people who were obviously not present at this festival of interfaith fellowship, who politicize and distort the teachings of the world’s spiritual traditions and unleash orgies of violence and destruction on the...
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Faith To Combat Division
Susan Korah
November 5, 2018
Convivium contributor Susan Korah is at the week-long Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto where an expected 10,000 attendees are getting a message about finding common ground through diverse faiths.
Karen Hamilton, ex-officio General Secretary to the Canadian Council of Churches, reinforced the call to action by people of faith and conviction, arguing that that their combined voices would form a potent force to build a more just, peaceful and sustainable world ...
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World Religions At Home in Toronto
Susan Korah
October 26, 2018
More than 10,000 visitors are expected as the Parliament of World Religions opens its doors in Canada’s largest city next week, Convivium contributor Susan Korah reports.
The Catholic Church is well positioned to send a strong message of inclusion and love, according MacCarthy and his colleagues on the Parliament of World Religions planning committee of the Archdiocese of Toronto “Hospitality and inclusion have always been built into the church in Toronto,” says Nei...
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The Fires This Time
Susan Korah
October 1, 2018
With the annual Parliamentary Forum on Religious Freedom being held in Ottawa this evening, Convivium contributor Susan Korah reports on film-maker Jordan Allott’s documentation of Iraqi Christians “caught between two fires” and threatened with extinction while Canada looks the other way.
With diminishing financial support, Ashti 2, the last church-run camp in Erbil available for Christians, was dismantled in early September, leaving the internally displaced who had not already left for Jordan with virtually no option but to return to their home towns such as Quaraqosh It has extingu...
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Canada’s Complicity in Christian Cleansing
Susan Korah
May 23, 2018
A future Canadian prime minister might one day apologize for our role in the conspiracy of silence surrounding the genocide of Syriac Christians, writes Convivium contributor Susan Korah. By then, she warns, Christ’s followers could be extinct in the very lands where Jesus walked.
A motion introduced in parliament by then interim Leader of the Opposition Conservative Party Rona Ambrose in June 2016 to declare ISIS atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other Middle Eastern minorities a genocide was defeated 166-139, with the Prime Minister and most Liberal MPs voting agai...