“The Syrian community was the first group outside our family and close friends to reach out to us. We want to offer back some of the support they showed us,” Paula Kassig said Thursday night at the University of Saint Francis.
Ed Kassig said their son, humanitarian aid worker Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, “gave up his life for the people he loved and served” in Syria.
“I ask of you, in dealing with our own fears, let us be certain we don’t blame the victims by denying them refuge,” Ed Kassig told a crowd of about 150 people.
“We, Americans, must take care that in our zeal and fear, we don’t do more damage than is done by the evil we are trying to prevent and they are fleeing,” he said.
The Indianapolis couple were among featured speakers at a Saint Francis forum on the Syrian refugee crisis.
Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig went missing in Syria while delivering medical supplies in 2013.
A former U.S. Army Ranger who had served in the Iraq war, Kassig was 26 when he was beheaded by Islamic State fighters in November 2014.
“We had faced the worst: We lost our son. How could we turn this senseless chain of events into something good?” Ed Kassig said from the stage of the USF North Campus.
Paula Kassig said she and her husband wanted to continue their son’s work in helping refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war – as well as those who have not fled and are facing starvation, prison, torture and bombings “by many, many countries” involved in the conflict.
She said she has worked with refugees in her career as a public nurse.
“I have seen their determination to become Americans after chance brought them here. They have no choice where they go; that is decided for them,” Paula Kassig said.
She said that events such as the one at Saint Francis “are essential to creating an Indiana that practices hospitality and fosters the development of all Hoosiers to be the best people we can be.”
Gov. Mike Pence announced in November that he was halting Syrian refugee resettlement in Indiana until he could be assured that “proper security measures have been achieved” by the federal government. The Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis later resettled a family of Syrian refugees in the city.
On Thursday night, the Kassigs repeated variations of the question: How and why do they go on with their son’s work after his death?
Ed Kassig concluded their appearance by saying, “Given the scope of this humanitarian crisis, the question is not how or why do we go on, but how could we not?”
Saint Francis will have a program at 7 p.m. March 3 in which refugee resettlement groups will offer information on how to help refugees. The university is accepting Syrian refugee relief kits – soap bars, toothpaste, bath towels and other personal hygiene items – through April 30
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