A Catholic nun in Iraq who obtained a visa from the State Department after outraged readers protested said Friday that brutality by Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists has stripped Christians of their dignity.
"The situation of people is really not that great, especially after they've lost everything," Sister Diana Momeka, of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena, told Greta Van Susteren on
Fox News. "They've lost their dignity, because when you lose your home, you lose everything you have.
"You lose your dignity because you become homeless," she added. "That's how we identify ourselves now. I would say that we don't have any dignity left there because we have lost everything.
"Even our holy places that we used to worship have been bombed. I would say the situation is not that good."
Sister Diana testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the slaughtering of Christians by ISIS in the Plain of Nineveh, in Mosul and in other areas of Iraq that began last June.
Her order fled their convent in Mosul on Aug. 6, 2014, which she told Van Susteren was "the hour of danger, when we realized that ISIS was going to overrun most of the town."
Late last month, the State Department denied Sister Diana's request for a visa to visit the United States to speak to Congress on the issue. Reports by
Newsmax.com and Newsmax TV so enraged readers and viewers that they bombarded the agency with calls and emails until the decision was reversed.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in a
Newsmax interview, called for a congressional investigation if the nun's visa was not granted.
Sister Diana's visit was sponsored by the Institute for Global Engagement and 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, both of which are based in the Washington area.
In sometimes emotional detail, she described ISIS' violence toward Christians in the region, which includes paying "tribute" — money — and converting to Islam or facing death.
"That's true. That's true," she said when asked about the choices. It affects women and children, too, she said.
"One of the stories that I have been struggling with is about four weeks ago, a woman was released by ISIS, thrown in the street," Sister Diana said. "She is totally traumatized now. She's in her 40s.
"I'm trying to help her, yet it is very hard because she was constantly raped, burned by cigarettes and tortured. Her body was beaten very badly. That's one of the victims of ISIS."
She told Van Susteren that she came to the United States because "I came to be the voice for those who have no voice."
"My people told me to 'be our voice.' We need the world to hear our stories, that we have been driven out of our homes. We have done nothing.
"Why do we deserve this?" Sister Diana asked. "Why do we deserve to be like this, living in the slums?"
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