The Knights of Columbus, one of the largest Catholic fraternal organizations in the world, released a report Thursday that outlines the Islamic State’s torture, murder and rape of Christians, and demands that the U.S. deem those actions as genocide against Christians.
“ISIS is committing genocide — the ‘crime of crimes’ against religious groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya,” the report states. “It is time for the United States to join the rest of the world by naming it and taking action against it as required by law.”
The 300-page report comes as pressure intensifies on President Obama to declare the terrorist group guilty of genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities. The House is expected to approve a nonbinding resolution this week declaring that the Islamic State is guilty of these crimes.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton back in late December said there was enough evidence of the killing of Christians and other religious groups in the Middle East to call it “genocide,” a term she was previously reluctant to use.
“Yes, I will now. I will because we now have enough evidence,” Clinton said during a town hall meeting. “What is happening is genocide. Deliberately aimed at destroying not only the lives but wiping out the existence of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East in territories controlled by ISIS.”
The Knights of Columbus report chronicles Islamic State references to targeting Christians to seek and destroy Christianity in Iraq and Syria and beyond, including those found in Dabiq, the group’s magazine.
The Knights of Columbus visited Iraq in February and interviewed Christian victims of the Islamic State, gathering witness statements on rapes, beheadings, crucifixions, kidnapping, forced conversions, murders of children and the elderly, property confiscation, and other violence. It includes lists of murdered Christians and destroyed churches, as well as what appears to be a price list for sex slaves.
In addition, the report incudes a legal brief making the case that ISIS’ atrocities met the definition of genocide laid out in a 1958 treaty.
It points out that the European Parliament, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Iraq and Kurdish governments, as well as Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have labeled the Islamic State’s actions genocide.
Last year, the Obama administration was considering invoking the genocide label, but was only considering a declaration covering the Yazidis, an ethnic/religious minority numbering about 500,000 in northern Iraq, according to a Yahoo News report.
The Islamic State had openly declared its intention to exterminate the Yazidis and their slaughter on Mount Sinjar in Iraq first drew U.S. intervention into the anti-Islamic State fight in the late summer of 2014.
Christian groups and members of Congress quickly took exception to the genocide label referring only to the Yazidis, insisting that Islamic State atrocities against Christians in Iraq and Syria were undeniably genocide as well.
Secretary of State John Kerry in August of 2014 had come very close to a finding of genocide for Christians and Yazidis, and said the Islamic State’s mass killing and extreme mistreatment of both groups “bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide.”
The Knights of Columbus soon took up the cause and wrote a letter to Kerry pressing their case about Christian genocide. The State Department responded by asking them to chronicle the evidence for administration officials to review, and Kerry in February said he would soon decide about whether to make a genocide declaration.
The Knights have collected 45,000 signatures on an online petition urging Kerry not to exclude Christians from the designation. Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is one of the signers.
Administration officials are deeply conflicted over whether to include Christians in the genocide declaration, with some arguing that the Islamic State has only directly threatened to wipe out Yazidis and have not said the same things about Christians, though they have targeted them with killings, kidnappings, the destruction of churches and other violence, Yahoo News reports.
Pentagon officials worry that a genocide designation could impose a moral obligation on the United Stats to use its military to protect afflicted populations, potentially shifting resources away from efforts to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State, the Yahoo News article points out.
