A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a resolution Thursday to recognize the Christian genocide taking place in Iraq and Syria, in hopes that the resolution will force the Obama administration to act.
“Christianity in the Middle East is shattered,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., said Thursday at an event introducing the measure. “The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State’s barbarous onslaught. This is genocide.”
“Last year, the world watched in horror as ISIS initiated a political and religious insurrection in the name of establishing a caliphate across Iraq and Syria,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif. “We must not mince words, today a genocide is being committed against Christians and other religious minorities in their historic homelands throughout the greater Middle East. These crimes against humanity must be properly acknowledged in order for the global community to appropriately respond to these infringements on religious freedom.”
“Does this administration care?” asked former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. “This is genocide.”
“Christians are in trouble throughout the Middle East and northern Africa — I hope this administration dials up concern for Christians … I don’t know what the administration thought, that things couldn’t get worse or whatever,” said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. “There’s a growing segment of our society that doesn’t seem to have a lot of respect for the importance of the Christian community and the role it plays.”
“The United States should be aggressively protecting these Christians regardless of what the cause of the instability is,” continued Poe. “But they should be protected even more because part of that instability was caused by decisions made by the United States.”
Wolf pointed out that the Obama administration didn’t say that the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State were killed because of their religion, and instead called them “21 Egyptians.” But those calling attention to Christian persecution say this omission was glaring because the Islamic State video showing their beheading was titled “A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross.” In it, a masked jihadi points a bloody knife in the direction of the Vatican and warns, “We will conquer Rome.”
A year ago, California businessman and Chaldean-American leader Mark Arabo said in a story that went viral: “Christianity in Mosul is dead, and a Christian holocaust is in our midst … children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed and fathers are being hung.”
A year later, Iraq’s 1.5 million strong Christian population has been culled to 300,000, as millions of Iraqis and Syrians flee the devastation wrought by the Islamic State.
Iraq boasts the oldest continuing community of Christians stretching back 2,000 years, but they are on the verge of being completely annihilated by the Islamic State. Seventeen Christian families leave Iraq every day, Wolf said Wednesday at a panel discussion held by In Defense of Christians in Washington, D.C.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said Thursday that Iraqi’s religious minorities are literally begging on their knees for action.
“The head of the Maronite church got down on his knees [in front of me] and said, ‘Please help us get out, or otherwise they’re going to kill each one'” of the Christians left in Iraq, said Mulvaney.
Even though millions are being targeted by radical Islamist groups because of their religion, there is currently no way to prioritize refugee status on the basis of religion.
While a resolution does not have the force of law, legislators see naming the tragedy in the Middle East as the first step the United States must take.
“By bringing the authority of the United States Congress, which still is viewed with significant authority around the world, and planting that word in front of the consciousness of the international community, hopefully it compels broader, swifter strategic thinking and action,” Fortenberry told the Washington Examiner.
“The United States should provide humanitarian aid, protection and faster refugee processing for these most vulnerable communities, but an official statement of the Congress of the United States must be made to label these atrocities carried out against Christians and other religious minorities for what they are … genocide,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.
Supporters said they’re hopeful the resolution could influence the Obama administration’s actions. In August 2014, Fortenberry, joined by Vargas and Eshoo, helped pass a resolution in the House condemning the persecution of Iraqi Christians and religious minorities in August 2014. Three days later, President Obama ordered airstrikes to save the Yezidi religious minority from extermination on Mount Sinjar by the Islamic State.
“It’s sad that all we are doing is calling it genocide, but yet at the same time, the power of the word itself … creates the gateway for additional action by the international community … to try to stop what’s a threat to civilization itself,” Fortenberry told the Examiner.
A cadre of lawmakers brought the resolution to the Vatican last week, and Pope Francis promised to present it to fellow Catholic House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, when the two meet later this month. Pope Francis has called the international community’s failure to respond to the crisis “a scandal of silence.”
“My parents and I became human rights defenders precisely to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, during the panel discussion Wednesday. “What the world promised would never happen again is happening today — mass murder, mass rape, mass torture. All of this is happening … as I speak.”
