ISIS genocide in Iraq...
U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake
November 12, 2015 | The Obama administration is moving to designate the Islamic State’s murderous attacks on the Yazidi in Iraq an act of “genocide,” an extremely rare move intended to ratchet up international pressure against the terror organization, administration officials tell Yahoo News.
See also:
U.S. Holocaust Museum Report: Islamic State Targeting of Yezidis is ‘Genocide’
November 12, 2015 | A new report released by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum finds that the Islamic State terror group “has been and is perpetrating genocide” against the Yezidi religious minority in Northern Iraq.
U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake
November 12, 2015 | The Obama administration is moving to designate the Islamic State’s murderous attacks on the Yazidi in Iraq an act of “genocide,” an extremely rare move intended to ratchet up international pressure against the terror organization, administration officials tell Yahoo News.
The action, which sources say could be announced by Secretary of State John Kerry in the next few weeks, has been pushed by top officials at the human rights and religious freedom offices at the State Department. It has also been prodded by a report to be released today by the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The report documents horrific mass killings and sexual slavery targeting the small Yazidi community, as well as crimes against other ethnic minorities, by IS forces who swept through Northern Iraq last year. “What we found is there was a deliberate attempt by the forces of the Islamic State to not only ethnically cleanse the Yazidi population [forcibly remove them from their lands] but to exterminate them,” said Cameron Hudson, the director of the museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which commissioned the report. “And as they are continuing to hold, kidnap and enslave the [Yazidi ] women and children, this a crime that is still being committed,” he said.
A Yazidi girl, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, rests at the Iraqi-Syrian border crossing last year.
The move to invoke the powerfully evocative “genocide” label comes amid continuing internal discussions among senior officials at the White House, the State Department and other agencies about the legal implications of such a statement. A loosely worded 1948 treaty calls on signatory nations, including the United States, to take unspecified actions to “prevent and to punish” the “odious scourge” of genocide. But officials cautioned that there were still issues to iron out before committing the U.S. to a legal designation that some may argue requires an adjustment to U.S. military strategy. That strategy is currently designed, in President Obama’s formulation, to “ultimately destroy” the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) — a goal that one administration supporter, Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, acknowledged this week could take between 15 and 20 years absent intervention by ground troops from neighboring countries.
Displaced Yazidi walk toward the Syrian border near the town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate.
The Yazidi — an ancient population of about 500,000 who practice a religion that incorporates elements of Christianity and Islam —first attracted international attention over a year ago as Islamic State forces besieged thousands of refugees who had fled to Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq, trapping them without food or water. Their plight prompted President Obama to launch initial airstrikes in what he described then as a “humanitarian” effort to save the lives of innocent civilians. What especially alarmed officials — and set IS’ conduct apart from other atrocities by IS against Christians and other minorities — is that the terror group openly declared its intention to wipe out the Yazidi. In its English language magazine Dabiq, IS denounced the Yazidi as devil worshipers and exhorted followers to kill male Yazidi (“sit in wait for them at every place of ambush”) and enslave the women.
U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake
See also:
U.S. Holocaust Museum Report: Islamic State Targeting of Yezidis is ‘Genocide’
November 12, 2015 | A new report released by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum finds that the Islamic State terror group “has been and is perpetrating genocide” against the Yezidi religious minority in Northern Iraq.
The report, “Our Generation Is Gone: The Islamic State's Targeting of Iraqi Minorities in Ninewa,” also finds that the terror group “perpetrated crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes against Christian, Yezidi, Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean-Mandaen, and Kaka’I in Ninewa province from June-August 2014.” The report, released on Wednesday, was primarily written by Naomi Kikoler, deputy director of the museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. Kikoler traveled to northern Iraq in September 2015, where she spoke with dozens of members of Iraq’s ethnic and religious minorities who were displaced during the summer of 2014 as the Islamic State seized their cities and towns. “Today is in many ways a sad and solemn day -- thankfully genocide and the commission of mass atrocities and crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing is rare. This is not something that we want to have to say on many occasions,” Kikoler said of the report’s findings at a press conference on Thursday.
Cover of new report issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“In the summer of 2014, the self-proclaimed Islamic State carried out a violent campaign against civilians in Ninewa province in northern Iraq, home to many of Iraq’s ethnic and religious minorities,” the report says, “they forced more than 800,000 people from their homes and deliberately destroyed shrines, temples, and churches.” “They also kidnapped thousands and killed hundreds, likely thousands, of people,” states the report. “In less than three months, IS decimated millennia-old communities and irrevocably tore the social fabric of the once-diverse region. Now almost no members of the minority groups IS attacked live in Ninewa province.” "Men, women, and children who were kidnapped and are still being held by Islamic State continue to be the victims of atrocity crimes,” reads the report. “Their release must be a priority.”
Young displaced Iraqis wait for food distribution at a camp on the outskirts of Erbil.
Kikoler emphasized that “this is a moment where we need to ensure that the voices of those who’ve experienced these crimes are heard, that this report helps to compel action to assist those at risk and those who remain in need to also ensure that the American public and the world public understands what happened to the people in Northern Iraq.” Kikoler shared the stories of several survivors of the onslaught of the Islamic State in Iraq, including Elias, a survivor of the August 2014 massacre of Yazidis in the Iraq village of Kojo. “He shared with me that he did not know where his sons were save for one, he did not know where his mother was, he did not know where his wife was, he did not know where his sisters were,” Kikoler said, “They were all missing, they’ve all either been killed or kidnapped by the Islamic State.” Kikoler said that listening to Elias’s story, “I thought of my own family’s experiences and I thought of seventy years ago when my grandfather lost his entire family in the Holocaust.”
Margit Meissner, an Austrian Holocaust survivor in her nineties and long-time Museum volunteer, shared her thoughts on the targeting of minorities in Iraq. “I am appalled to hear that in 2014 genocide was perpetrated against the Yezidi people in Iraq and that Christians and other minority communities were the victims of ethnic and religious cleansing,” Meissner said, “Over seventy years ago the world vowed never again, yet today the world is again faced with a group, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, that is intent on destroying people based on their religion or their ethnicity.” “I am proud that the museum is speaking out on behalf of Iraqi minorities. In doing so we are doing what was not done on behalf of the Jews during the Holocaust, serving as a voice, calling for action, urging us all to transcend politics and to nurture compassion,” Meissner concluded.
MORE
