Tag Archives: Genocide

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to defend Yazidi women, ISIS sex slaves

Lawyers meet with Syrian refugees

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will defend Yazidi women who have been victims of sexual slavery, rape and genocide by Islamic State militants in Iraq, her law firm said on Friday.

Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, is seeking to prosecute the Islamist group through the International Criminal Court for their crimes against the Yazidi community.

“We know that thousands of Yazidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved,” Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney, said in a statement.

“We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place,” Clooney said. “And yet no one is being held to account.”

Islamic State militants have killed, raped and enslaved thousands of Yazidis since 2014, accusing them of being devil worshippers and forcing over 400,000 of the religious minority to flee their homes in northern Iraq.

Yazidi campaigners, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad Basee Taha, have been pushing for international justice for the crimes committed against them by Islamic State.

Taha, 21, took her message to the U.N. Security Council in December last year, and has spoken to successive governments, appealing to the international community to act.

Taha said she was abducted by Islamic State militants from her village in Iraq in August 2014, and taken to the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, where she and thousands of other Yazidi women and children were exchanged by militants as gifts.

She was tortured and repeatedly raped before she escaped three months later.

According to the United Nations, the Sunni militants enslaved about 7,000 women and girls in 2014, mainly Yazidis whose faith blends elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, and is still holding 3,500, some as sex slaves.

The United States, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have all described the Islamist militant group’s actions as genocide.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Astrid Zweynert. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

Turkey Rejects EU Parliament Report

A woman adjusts the Turkish flag next to the EU flag before the arrival of Turkish PM Davutoglu at the EU Commission headquarters i

VIENNA (Reuters) – Turkey rejects a European Parliament progress report released on Thursday, Ankara’s European Union Affairs Minister said, citing a reference in the report to the disputed 1915 massacre of Armenians.

“Unfortunately this year… the same reference takes place in the European Parliament’s Turkey report. These expressions, despite all our efforts and our warnings, could not be dropped,” Volkan Bozkir told reporters at a news conference in Austria, when asked about the report’s reference to genocide.

“That’s why we will consider this report as null and void and our permanent representative will send it back to the European Parliament.”

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed in clashes with Ottoman soldiers when Armenians lived in the empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Daren Butler)

U.S. says Islamic State committed genocide against Christians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions.”

Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such.

U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops.

Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack.

“We didn’t act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didn’t act militarily in Darfur. In this case within … days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘WE’VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT’

Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The group’s videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide.

“We’re very confident we’ve done an enormous amount,” he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department.

“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi’ites because they are Shi’ites,” Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile “cessation of hostilities” has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Kerry to miss deadline for decision on whether ISIS atrocities are genocide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not have a decision on whether atrocities committed by Islamic State constitute genocide by a March 17 deadline set by Congress, but he should have a decision soon, the State Department said on Wednesday.

“We are informing Congress today that we’re not going to make that deadline,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing.

“We certainly respect the deadlines that Congress lays down on specific reports, or in this case decisions about genocide,” he said. “However, we also take the process very seriously. And so if we need additional time … in order to reach a more fact-based, evidence-based decision, we’re going to … ask for extra time.”

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander; Editing by Eric Beech)

White House hesitant to call Islamic State’s actions genocide

The White House does not believe the Islamic State’s actions against Christians in the Middle East have risen to the level of genocide, a spokesman told reporters in Washington this week.

Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration was “concerned by the way that ISIL attempts to target religious minorities” — including Christians — in Iraq and Syria. But when a reporter asked the spokesman if the White House was prepared to call the situation genocide, he declined to give the acts that distinction.

“My understanding is, the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached,” Earnest told reporters, according to a transcript published on the White House website. “But we have been quite candid and direct about how ISIL’s tactics are worthy of the kind of international, robust response that the international community is leading. And those tactics include a willingness to target religious minorities, including Christians.”

ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State, which controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and has been accused of widespread atrocities and human rights abuses in those areas.

The European Parliament and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have recently adopted resolutions that accuse the organization’s operatives of committing genocide, which is outlawed under a 1948 United Nations treaty that defines the crime as certain acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Those actions include murdering or inflicting serious harm upon a group’s members.

According to ADF International, there are now 1.8 million fewer Christians living in Iraq and Syria than there were a few years ago. The religious freedom advocacy group places the current population at 775,000, down from 2.65 million, and says Yazidis have nearly been wiped out.

The European Parliament’s resolution, adopted last month, accuses the Islamic State of “committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities, who do not agree with” the group’s radical interpretation of Islam. It states the Islamic State has slaughtered, beaten, extorted, enslaved and forcibly converted many minorities, and its operatives have also vandalized cemeteries, monuments, churches and other places of worship.

The resolution called for the United Nations Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, which would formally investigate the genocide allegations. The court would also prosecute and try the accused, and impose punishments upon a guilty verdict.

ADF International has issued a similar call for action.

The United States has also been asked to characterize the Islamic State’s actions as genocide.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent commission that makes recommendations to politicians, in December asked the government to designate Christians and four other groups as victims of Islamic State genocide in Iraq and Syria. So far, though, the White House has yet to place the label on the Middle East situation.

“In that region of the world, Christians are a religious minority, and we certainly have been concerned,” Earnest said during the press briefing on Monday. “That’s one of the many reasons we’re concerned with ISIL and their tactics, which is that it’s an affront to our values as a country to see people attacked, singled out or slaughtered based on their religious beliefs.”

The Omnibus spending bill approved by Congress in mid-December includes a provision that says the Secretary of State, John Kerry, must submit an evaluation on the Islamic State’s attacks on Christians and other people of faith in the Middle East to lawmakers within 90 days. That evaluation must include if the situation “constitutes mass atrocities or genocide,” the bill states.

The deadline for that report falls in mid-March.

ISIS committing ‘genocide’ against Christians, EU Parliament says

The European Parliament has labeled the Islamic State’s actions against Christians and other religious and ethnic groups as genocide, calling for world powers to hold the group responsible.

The parliament on Thursday adopted a resolution that states the Islamic State “is committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities who do not agree with” its radical religious beliefs, adding the actions of the insurgency “are part of its attempts to exterminate any religious and ethnic minorities from the areas under its control.”

The resolution also accuses the Islamic State of “egregious human rights abuses, which amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.” The genocide label carries some added weight, though, because the United Nations has adopted a treaty devoted to punishing and preventing it.

The treaty, implemented in 1948, defines genocide as certain actions “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The actions include murdering the group’s members, or inflicting serious bodily or mental harm upon them.

The parliament’s resolution calls for the United Nations Security Council to ask the International Criminal Court to launch an official investigation into the genocide allegations.

It was approved one week after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a group concerned with human rights, adopted a similar resolution that stated the Islamic State has “perpetrated acts of genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law.”

Lawmakers and advocacy groups have called for the United States to declare the Islamic State’s actions as genocide, though the country has yet to take that step. Resolutions to that effect have been introduced in the House and Senate, but they have not been adopted.

The European Parliament’s resolution details several of the Islamic State’s actions against civilians, notably Christians and Yazidis, as the group captured large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The resolution states the Islamic State killed some 5,000 Yazidis and forced some 2,000 women into marriages, slavery or human trafficking. Others have been forced to convert to Islam.

The Islamic State also kidnapped more than 220 Assyrian Christians last February, according to the resolution. While some of them have since been released, the fate of most remains unknown.

The resolution charges that more than 150,000 Christians fled their homes on Aug. 6, 2014, as the Islamic State gained territory in Ninevah Province. Some of those who did not escape were captured, and the Islamic State executed some and enslaved others. The Islamic State still controls Mosul, leaving thousands of Christians displaced without any of their possessions.

According to ADF International, a religious freedom advocate, the number of Christians living in Syria and Iraq has dropped from 2.65 million to 775,000 in recent years. The organization’s director of EU advocacy, Sophia Kuby, said it welcomed the European Parliament’s resolution.

“It was high time that the EU responded to the undeniable evidence of this genocide, which includes assassinations of church leaders, torture, mass murders, kidnapping, sexual enslavement, systematic rape of Christian and Yazidi girls and women, and the destruction of churches, monasteries, and cemeteries,” Kuby said in a statement.

Last month, Open Doors USA released a report that said Christian persecution had reached “unprecedented” levels and warned that it would likely continue to increase.

The nonprofit group released a list of the top 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution. Middle Eastern countries occupied five of the top 10 spots, and Islamic extremist groups were a source of persecution in four others.

In December, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent group that makes recommendations to the government, urged officials to designate Christians, Yazidis and other groups victims of Islamic State’s genocide.

No such declaration has been made.

“The hallmark of genocide is the intent to destroy a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group, in whole or in part,” the commission’s chairman, Robert P. George, said in a statement at the time. “ISIL’s intent to destroy religious groups that do not subscribe to its extremist ideology in the areas in Iraq and Syria that it controls, or seeks to control, is evident in, not only its barbarous acts, but also its own propaganda.”