Fed up with the administration’s refusal to boldly label as genocide the mass ISIS murders of Christians, the Catholic Knights of Columbus Wednesday launched a national TV campaign to bring new pressure on President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
While there has been video evidence of Christians being killed and Christian symbols destroyed, the administration has instead focused on the ISIS slayings of others, notably Muslims.
Knights of Columbus Supreme Council TV ad.
Now, facing a congressional deadline to make a determination about whether Christians and other religious minorities have suffered genocide at the hands of ISIS, Christian groups like the Knights are weighing in to force the administration’s hand.
In their new ad, widely being played on Fox and MSNBC, it is noted that key Republican presidential candidates and even Hillary Rodham Clinton have called the ISIS killings genocide.
“Christians in Iraq and Syria have suffered injustice after injustice by being kidnapped, killed, having their homes and churches confiscated or destroyed, and being forced to flee for their lives. Because of hit squads, they fear to enter UN refugee camps and, as a result, are then often excluded from immigration to the West,” said Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus.
They are pushing a petition urging Kerry to make the declaration. It can be seen at www.StopTheChristianGenocide.org
The State Department is required by law to make a designation one way or the other on the matter by mid-March.
The petition urges Kerry “to declare that Christians, along with Yazidis and other vulnerable minorities, are targets of ongoing genocide.” That would kick in certain legal moves under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The petition is co-sponsored by the group In Defense of Christians.
The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, with 1.9 million members worldwide. It has raised more than $8 million has been raised to provide housing, food, medical aid, education and general relief to persecuted Christians and other religious minorities, especially from Iraq and Syria, and to raise awareness about their plight, including through a #40BucksForLent effort launched on Ash Wednesday.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
