American lawmakers voted Monday to label Islamic State group atrocities in Syria and Iraq “genocide”, and called for setting up Syrian war crimes tribunal under United Nations authority. Res. 75. At present, there are over 200 co-signers.
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The resolution passed the House with a unanimous vote of 383-0.
“Armenian Americans welcome today’s U.S. House vote as powerful encouragement for U.S. leadership in ending genocidal attacks – many being committed by allies of Ankara’s – across the Middle East, and, more broadly, as a meaningful step toward elevating America’s response to genocide from a political choice to a moral imperative”, said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.
“When a group of people, ISIS, eighth-century barbarians with 21st century weaponry, can systematically try to exterminate another group of people simply due to their faith tradition, violating the sacred space of individuality, conscience, and religious liberty, you undermine the entire system for global order, building out of rule of law, proper social interaction, civilization itself”, he continued.
Congress has given President Obama until Thursday to make a declaration on whether IS is committing genocide or not.
“ISIL’s takeover of northern Iraq could well mark the end of the presence in that area of its ancient Yazidi and Christian communities.”
“With each passing day, the roll of modern martyrs grows”, Mr. Kurtz said in a statement on Monday. “We also will continue to offer our prayers for the persecuted”. Submitted to Secretary of State John Kerry on 9 March, the report was compiled from evidence of a recent fact finding mission to Iraq, which documented the murder, injury, enslavement and displacement that Christians have suffered at the hands of ISIS.
“Christians, Yezidis, and other beleaguered minority groups can find new hope in this trans-partisan and ecumenical alliance against ISIS’ barbaric onslaught”, Fortenberry, who is co-chairman of the Religious Minorities of the Middle East Caucus and represents America’s largest Yezidi community, said in the statement. It contained first-hand testimonies from victims of violence and displacement by the Islamic State, or from family members of these victims.
“Murder of Christians is commonplace”.
The resolution came to a vote just days after the release of a graphic new report by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians on ISIS’ atrocities.
Experts insist that the word carries with it significant meaning that other terms like “ethnic cleansing” lack.
History shows that designating a crisis as genocide can bring about swift worldwide action, as the world witnessed when North Atlantic Treaty Organisation used the word to describe events in Kosovo and Bosnia.
In the wake of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of Nazi German officials, the United Nations defined genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
“Accountability that is aggressive, predictable, transparent and applicable to perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity on all sides of the divide must be pursued now”, said Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., who sponsored the resolution.
It is “appeal to the conscience of the world”, he added.
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To date, the European Parliament, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Pope Francis, and presidential candidates in both parties, among many others, are standing in solidarity to name and decry this genocide. Such a declaration would mean the USA would have legal obligations.
