After months of equivocation, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Thursday that his department has determined that the mass slaughter of Christians and other ethnic minorities by the Islamic State amounts to genocide.
“Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims,” Kerry said Thursday in a statement, referring to another name for the terrorist group. “Daesh is genocidal by self proclamation, by ideology and by actions, by what it says, what it believes and what it does.”
“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians, Yazidis because they are Yazidis, Shia because they are Shia,” he said. “… It’s entire world view is based on eliminating those that do not subscribe to its perverse ideology.”
Kerry’s conclusion will not obligate the United States to intervene more aggressively to prevent more Islamic State atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic minorities sin Iraq and Syria, a main concern among among Obama administration officials and the major reason for State’s hesitation.
Kerry’s decision came one day after a State Department spokesman said Kerry would miss the congressionally mandated March 17 deadline for a determination, even as pressure on the administration intensified on the issue.
The House this week unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution declaring the Islamic State atrocities against Christians and other minorities as genocide. The Knights of Columbus, the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world, last week issued a 280-page report describing the terrorist group’s mistreatment of Christians and other religious minorities.
The report detailed Islamic State killings, kidnappings, rapes, enslavement and destruction of churches. It included a list of 1,131 Christians killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014 and 125 churches attacked there.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican and a lead sponsor of the resolution, commended Kerry for making “this important designation.”
“The genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and others is not only a grave injustice to these ancient faith communities — it is an assault on human dignity and an attack on civilization itself. The United States has now spoken with clarity and moral authority,” he said in a statement Thursday.
“I sincerely hope that the genocide designation will raise international consciousness, end the scandal of silence, and create the preconditions for the protection and reintegration of these ancient faith communities into their ancestral homelands. Christians, Yazidis, and others remain an essential part of the Middle East’s rich tapestry of religious and ethnic diversity,” he continue. “They now have new cause for hope.”
Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson called Kerry’s determination “correct and historic” and “an important step forward.”
“For one of the few times in our history, the United States has designated an ongoing situation as genocide, and the State Department is to be commended for having the courage to say so,” he said in a statement.
“The United States and the world are united on this and simply will not look the other way,” he added, thanking Kerry for seriously considering the evidence his organization collected. “Our country, and the international community must make sure the slaughter ends and that these innocent people are protected.”
Kerry also said the Islamic State is responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at Christians, Yazidis, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and other religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims that don’t subscribe to their extremist beliefs.
The State Department came to its decision, he said, even though it’s impossible to develop a “fully detailed, comprehensive picture” of all that Islamic State’s atrocities. The genocide conclusion is based on months of review of existing information gathered by the State Department and the intelligence community and outside groups.
Kerry said he made the conclusion based on an abundance of “appalling” evidence and the nature of the acts reported. He specifically mentioned the Islamic State’s trapping of hundreds of Yazidi men, women and children on Mt. Sinjar in August of 2014 preceded by the capture and enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and girls, “selling them at auction, raping them at will and destroying the communities in which they lived for countless generations.”
In other parts of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has slaughtered Christians solely because of their faith, executing 49 Ethiopian and Coptic Christians in Libya in late February and forcing Christian women and girls into sexual slavery.
“Daesh has made a systematic effort to destroy the cultural heritage of ancient communities … destroying Armenian, Syrian and orthodox Roman Catholic churches, blowing up monasteries and tombs of profits and desecrating cemeteries,” he said.
Kerry was careful to say that he is “neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury” in respect to the “allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The full facts, he said, must be brought to light by an independent investigation and a formal legal determination by a “competent court or tribunal.”
“The United States will strongly support efforts to collect documents, preserve and analyze the evidence of atrocities and we will do all we can to see that the perpetrators are held accountable,” he said.
“I hope that my statement today will assure the victims of Daesh’s atrocities that the United States recognizes and confirms the despicable nature of the crimes that have been committed against them,” he said. “I hope it will highlight the shared interest that otherwise diverse groups have in opposing Daesh.”
