An Iraqi police officer stood guard at the entrance to Al Qaleb Al Aqdas Church in the Karada district of Baghdad on Sunday. Some Iraqi churches are on high alert. Credit Eros Hoagland for The New York Times
ihstartv.com
- forbes.com
Ewelina
Ochab, Dec 23, 2016
Around
Christmas 2015, numerous voices within the international community raised their
concerns that the persecution of Christians, Yazidis and other religious
minorities in Syria and Iraq reached the threshold of "genocide"
under international law. The movement was highly visible in the United States,
led by the Knights of Columbus, followed by the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the president of the
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
Russell Moore, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Despite growing
consensus on the issue in the United States, the U.S. Government has remained
silent for months.
Europe,
however, has witnessed a markedly different response to the same legal
question: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the
European Parliament (EP) adopted resolutions recognizing the persecution
against Christians as genocide on January 27 and February 4, respectively. The
PACE resolution condemned the Daesh atrocities as genocide and called upon the
member states to "act on the presumption that that Da’ish commits genocide
and should be aware that this entails action under the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." The
resolution further emphasized the states’ obligation to prevent genocide including
preventing their nationals from participating in the genocidal acts. The EP
resolution urged "the members of the UN Security Council to support a
referral by the Security Council to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in
order to investigate violations committed in Iraq and Syria by the so-called
"ISIS/Daesh" against Christians, Yazidis and religious and ethnic
minorities."
Subsequently,
on March 17, 2016, the U.S. Department of State recognized that Daesh’s
atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the
Middle East amounted to genocide. As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
announced, the government determined that Daesh’s crimes met the threshold of
genocide under international law: "Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation,
by ideology and by actions. What it says, what it believes, and what it
does." The UK Parliament followed that recognition a month later. On April
20, 2016, the UK House of Commons unanimously passed a motion recognizing the
Daesh genocide and calling upon the government to table a UN Security Council
resolution referring the situation in Syria and Iraq to the ICC.
Although
the long-awaited recognitions of Daesh genocide were significant, actions did
not follow. On the contrary, June 2016 brought some developments that took away
the hope for decisive steps from persecuted Christians in the Middle East. On
June 16, 2016, the International Independent Commission of Inquiry on the
Syrian Arab Republic, a United Nations body, released a report, They Came to
Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, confirming that the atrocities
against the Yazidis amounted to genocide. Christians were not considered in the
report at all (apart from a brief reference to Christian groups in one
paragraph of the lengthy report). While the Commission indicated its intention
to consider the Daesh atrocities committed against Christians, half a year
later, this has not been done yet.
The
report of the Commission was not irrelevant. It was the first UN report that
clearly recognized the Daesh atrocities as genocidal. The report has also
caused some movement to help the victims, especially in Canada. On June 16,
2016, Minister of Foreign Affair Stephane Dion made a statement at the Canadian
House of Commons confirming Canada’s recognition of Daesh genocide of the
Yazidis. Dion called upon the UN Security Council to undertake urgent actions.
Canada indicated that it would be sending a fact-finding mission to Iraq to
establish the best practices of how to help the Yazidis in Iraq. In October
2016, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passed a motion recognizing the
Daesh genocide against the Yazidis and calling upon the government to open the
doors for the Yazidi refugees within the following four months. Christians were
not included again. From the point in time of releasing the report, the
previously common efforts to recognize Daesh genocide against Christians,
Yazidis and other religious minorities, shifted into a movement focusing on
Yazidis only. This was also visible during the UN Forum of Minority Issues in
November 2016. This trend continues.
Do
we have any good news for religious minorities in the Middle East this
Christmas? Despite some positive steps taken by a few states, including Canada
to help Yazidis and Hungary pledging help for Christians, this is yet a
minority response. The rest of the world continues to watch on and discuss
whether this is genocide or not. While the genocide survivors are still
awaiting decisive steps to help their critical situation, additionally no steps
have been taken to bring the perpetrators to justice. No legal steps have been
taken to investigate the crimes and prosecute the perpetrators.
On
April 8, 2015, the ICC prosecutor refused to initiate preliminary
examinations into the atrocities committed by Daesh foreign fighters, despite
the fact that the ICC would have personal jurisdiction over the foreign
fighters that are nationals of state parties to the Rome Statute. The ICC
prosecutor claimed to have too narrow jurisdiction. The ICC prosecutor
indicated that the UN Security Council could confer the required jurisdiction
onto the ICC. However, over the last 20 months, the UN Security Council has not
attempted to exercise its right to do so.
In
September 2016, the UK, Belgium and Iraq called for cooperation in the fight
against Daesh impunity. However, despite time passing by, there is still no
indication of what mechanism will be chosen to prosecute the Daesh
perpetrators. Will it be an ad hoc tribunal as for Bosnia and Rwanda? A
national option as for Cambodia? Or a regional mechanism as for Somalian piracy
cases? There is also no information on how the negotiations are progressing or
whether they are progressing at all.
Despite
the fact that since last Christmas, the world has seen many positive
developments to recognize the Daesh atrocities as genocidal, we are still far
from telling the persecuted minorities that their future will be bright. We
also do not have good news for Christians in the Middle East that they will not
be forgotten or that there is a future for them in the Middle East. Actions are
urgently needed before the hope is gone. These actions are long overdue.
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