“We must recognize what Daesh [the Arabic name for ISIS] is doing to its victims,” Kerry said, speaking from the State Department podium. “We must hold the perpetrators accountable.”
As first reported by Yahoo News last November, the State Department has been weighing the extremely rare move of invoking a 1948 international genocide treaty, drafted in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, as a means of ramping up global pressure against the Islamic State group. The treaty commits signatory nations to take steps to “prevent and to punish” the “odious scourge” of genocide.
At the time, the administration was primarily focused on invoking the treaty because of the Islamic State group’s actions against the small Yazidi community in northern Iraq, including mass executions of males and sexual enslavement of women and children.
Newly released members of the minority Yazidi sect hug each other on the outskirts of Kirkuk on April 8, 2015. More than 200 elderly and infirm Yazidis were freed on Wednesday by ISIS militants who had held them captive since overrunning their villages in northwestern Iraq last summer.
But members of Congress and Christian groups in the U.S. lobbied the administration to take a broader approach and designate the Islamic State group’s actions against Christian minorities, Shia Muslims and other minority groups as genocide. The Knights of Columbus began running TV ads highlighting ISIS atrocities. Presidential candidates — including Hillary Clinton and John Kasich — endorsed the calls, and the House unanimously passed a resolution favoring a broader designation.
Today Kerry answered those calls, declaring Shia Muslims and Christians victims of genocide as well. State Department officials said the U.S. intelligence community had helped gather evidence of executions and mass graves in support of the designation.
“Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians,” Kerry said. “It kills Shia because they are Shia. It kills Yazidis because they’re Yazidis.”
In reaching his decision, Kerry had asked the U.S. intelligence community to assist State Department officials to help collect comprehensive information on mass graves, executions and other Islamic State atrocities, according to Rabbi David Saperstein, the State Department ambassador at large for international religious freedom, who along with other department human rights officials had pushed for the designation.
“The genocide treaty was created as a way for the world to say there are certain crimes that are so abhorrent to the conscience of humanity that they must be called for what they are,” said Saperstein. “This is a historical designation that hopefully will galvanize the conscience of the world.”
The move won immediate praise from members of Congress who had been advocating for the designation. One leading member said it will bring a “new cause for hope” to threatened minority groups.
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