Coalition MP Michael Sukkar. Picture: Lawrence Pinder
ishtartv.com - theaustralian.com.au
April
4, 2017
Coalition
frontbencher Michael Sukkar will push the government to formally recognise the
Islamic State massacre of Christians in Iraq and Syria as genocide.
Mr
Sukkar will call for a Coalition-sponsored motion to be put before parliament
when it returns in May.
The
bid to build consensus on the issue comes after Foreign Minister Julie Bishop
was approached last year by an ISIS survivor for the government to adopt a
genocide declaration against the terrorist group.
Labor’s
Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, last year put a motion to parliament to
recognise the ethnic and religious “cleansing” of Christians by ISIS but it was
never put to debate. Mr Sukkar, a Lebanese Christian and MP for Deakin, has now
called for the government to put its own motion to the house, following the
Scottish parliament’s recognition last week of the mass killings as “genocide”.
“The
persecution and attempted genocide of Christians and other minorities in the
Middle East has been occurring for centuries,” Mr Sukkar told The Australian.
“It has now reached its zenith with the bloodthirsty and barbaric Daesh (ISIS)
attempting to wipe all Christians and Yazidis from the Middle East.
‘‘Sadly,
the silence has been deafening from large parts of the Western media and
political class to these atrocities.”
Ms
Bishop is still to consider a request from the Yazidi community for the
Australian government to recognise ISIS as having engaged in genocide. The
Yazidi suffered one of the worst single mass killings at the hands of ISIS when
in 2014, 5000 were slaughtered at Mount Sinjar.
The
Australian two weeks ago documented the case of the Yazidi in Iraq and Syria, many
of whom are being brought to Australia under the government’s Syrian and Iraqi
humanitarian settlement program.
Nadia
Murad, a Yazidi who escaped ISIS and is now the UN Goodwill Ambassador for the
Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, asked Ms Bishop late last year to
promote their cause.
“Prime
Minister (Malcolm) Turnbull and minister Julie Bishop listened to my story last
year and they know what our women, men and children have been facing,” she told
The Australian. “I again ask them to recognise ISIS crimes as genocide and to
support an international process to hold perpetrators accountable.”
Mr
Bowen’s motion last May, which is still sitting on the notice papers,
recognised the “religious and cultural cleansing of the Assyrian people by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the systematic killings of
Assyrian people and destruction of ancient Assyrian cities, churches and
artefacts”. It also declared: “ISIL’s treatment of the Assyrian people is a
gross violation of human rights under the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.”
The
Australian Christian Lobby repeated its call to recognise the ISIS genocide of
Christians. ACL managing director Lyle Shelton said the British parliament and
US congress had passed similar motions.
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