The House unanimously passed a resolution Monday that calls on the United States to characterize the Islamic State’s atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other groups as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The bipartisan non-binding resolution passed 393-0 Monday night ahead of a congressionally mandated March 17 deadline for the administration to make a decision on whether to call the terror group’s action as genocide.
“The U.S. government should not turn a blind eye on the religious atrocities committed by ISIS,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a co-author of the bill, said on the House floor Monday. “The Yazidis and Assyrian Christians face this genocide together … it cannot go unheeded.”
Smith compared the Obama administration’s unwillingness to formally deem Islamic State actions genocide to the Clinton administration’s similar reluctance to declare the mass slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutu in Rwanda as genocide.
Several Democrats, including California Reps. Brad Sherman and Anna Eshoo, co-sponsored the resolution. Sherman on Monday said the Foreign Relations Committee is conducting a “complete analysis” of the group’s atrocities, but noted that it’s already clear some of it should be seen as genocide.
“This is a call upon the United States… to conduct measures designed to prevent these crimes and genocides in the future,” he said.
Sherman said it’s a misguided argument that to say the group’s actions against Christians shouldn’t be seen as genocide because the Islamic State allows them to pay a fine for not converting to Islam. “When they run out of money, they are executed because they aren’t paying more,” Sherman said.
The matter is under legal review at the State Department, and Secretary of State John Kerry will make a determination soon, although his decision could slip past this week’s deadline. State Department spokesman John Kirby, referring to the group as Daesh, wouldn’t indicate whether or not State would make the deadline.
“We remain appalled by the horrific acts of violence being committed by Daesh against people from a wide variety of ethnic and religious groups in Iraq and in Syria,” he said during his daily press briefing. “Regardless of whether their conduct satisfies certain legal definitions, including genocide an crimes against humanity, the United States has been clear that our interest in accountability for the perpetrators remains undiminished.”
The Obama administration has stopped short of formally declaring ISIS’ atrocities against these groups as genocide, although Kerry in August of 2014 said the mass killings and extreme mistreatment of both groups “bear all the warnings signs and hallmarks of genocide.”
Formalizing the declaration carries some potential legal consequences for the United Sates, and could obligate it to take further action to specifically prevent Islamic State atrocities against these groups.
It would be only the second time a U.S. administration has reached that conclusion while a conflict is ongoing, the Associated Press reported Monday. The first time was in 2004, when Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that atrocities being committed in Sudan’s Darfur region constituted genocide.
In the 2004 case, State Department lawyers didn’t believe it would obligate Powell to take action to stop it, unlike previous administration findings.
Last week, the Knights of Columbus, one of the largest Catholic fraternal organizations in the world, released a report outlining ISIS’ torture, murder and rape of Christians and demanded the the U.S. deem the actions a genocide.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 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.”
