Former Archbishop of Canterbury says UK government is 'institutionally biased' against Christian refugees

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, claims that the British government discriminates against Christian refugees who are fleeing from oppression in Syria.

"In the run-up to Easter, British taxpayers will be appalled by this institutional bias against Christians by politically correct officials," the former archbishop said, as reported by Daily Mail.

Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, claimed that Christians are not benefiting from British help because they are staying away from U.N. refugee camps for fear of being persecuted by rogue Islamist groups or Muslim officials who are hostile to Christian converts.

He said that by avoiding the camps, which are funded with aid from the British government, Christians are less likely to be included in resettlement schemes to be brought to the U.K.

The former archbishop warned that officials may be breaking the law by discriminating against the Christians.

"In this the British Government is not just breaking its manifesto pledge to look after Christian refugees it also appears to be breaking the law. The conflicts in the Middle East have resulted in suffering and persecution of Christians. They have been killed or chased out of the birthplace of their faith," Carey stated.

He asserted that the Christians rarely receive the help they need because "Muslim officials have been put in charge of the billions of British taxpayer aid in the UNHCR camps."

Nearly 10 percent of the Syrian population were Christians before the civil war broke in 2011. However, less than two percent of the refugees accepted in the Government's Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme between September 7, 2015 and June 30, 2016 were Christian.

Only 64 out of 4,175 Syrians admitted to the U.K. were Christians in the first year after the program was launched in September 2015.

According to John Pontifex of Aid to the Church in Need, there were 300,000 Christians at the start of the war in Aleppo, but their numbers have been reduced to about 30,000.

He recounted that during his visits to the region, he had met Christians who were too afraid to seek help at the camps.

The Christian charity Barnabas Fund has written a report in November 2015, which stated that radical Islamist groups have been in control of refugee camps in the Middle East since the 1980s and 1990s. The report noted that this pattern can also be seen in Syrian camps.