Ethiopian Christians killed for being “followers of the Cross”

Followers of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State) released on social networks on Sunday new violent material purportedly showing the execution of at least 28 people in Libya.

According to the images, which have been posted online by acolytes of the terrorists, a group of 12 Ethiopian men are conducted to a beach and beheaded in images very similar to those showed by the same organization two months ago, when 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians were murdered.

Another group of 16 men are shown being shot in the head by militants in a desert zone.

BATTLE “UNTIL OBEDIENCE BECOMES ALLAH’S”

The video, which is 29 minutes long, targets the Christian community. Jihadists say the actions have been carried out by two different factions of Daesh in Libya, those in the ‘Province of Barqa’ and the ‘Province of Fezzan’.

One of the assassins speaks to the camera: “To the nation of the cross: We are now back again.” He claimed that there is a “battle between faith and blasphemy, between truth and falsehood, until there is no more polytheism, and obedience becomes Allah's on its entirety.”

TERRORISTS REFER TO TAX FOR CHRISTIANS

Earlier in the video, a different speaker says Christians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul were given the choice to embrace Islam or maintain their Christian faith and pay a tax.

"The Islamic state has offered the Christian community this many times and set a deadline for this, but the Christians never cooperated," the speaker says.

At the beginning of the video, a man who appears to be a judge in a court enforcing Islam's Sharia law holds up documents and says a Syrian Christian had owed a Syrian Muslim 550,000 Syrian pounds (about $2,900) since 2004. “After applying to the Islamic court he got his money back within one month,” the man says.

The law cited throughout the video comes from the Koran's Surah 9:29. According to Daesh and other Islamic groups, Muslims are commanded to fight those who don't believe in Allah or the Last Day (Islam's equivalent of Judgment Day) unless the nonbelievers pay a tax or tribute.

Talking to the worldwide Christian community, the video adds: “You will not have safety, even in your dreams, until you accept Islam.”

The murdered men are described in the video as “followers of the Cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church.”

CHRISTIANS IN ETHIOPIA REACT

In Ethiopia, government spokesman Redwan Hussein said officials were in contact with its embassy in Cairo to verify the video's authenticity, according to the AP news agency.

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not”, he said. 

Hussein believes those killed likely were Ethiopian migrants hoping to reach Europe. Libya has become a hub for migrants across Africa hoping to cross the Mediterranean to enter Europe to find a new life.

Abba Kaletsidk Mulugeta, an official with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church's Patriarchate Office, said he also believed the victims likely were migrants.

“I believe this is just another case of the IS group killing Christians in the name of Islam. Our fellow citizens have just been killed on a faith-based violence that is totally unacceptable. This is outrageous,” Mulugeta said.