Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Fiona Bruce

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are suffering genocide at the hands of Daesh; and calls on the Government to make an immediate referral to the UN Security Council with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court so that perpetrators can be brought to justice.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate.

Genocide is a word of such gravity that it should never be used readily. It is rightly known as the “crime above all crimes”. For that reason, it is incumbent on us to prevent the term from being devalued or overused. However, such caution must not stop us naming a genocide when one is taking place. The supporters of the motion are here to insist that there is overwhelming evidence that the atrocities of Daesh in Syria and Iraq should be recognised for the genocide they are and considered as such by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court. It will support similar resolutions of other leading international and legislative bodies.

There are only two possibilities for Members here. If the House is not satisfied that genocidal atrocities are being perpetrated, we must not pass the motion, on which I am minded to test the will of the House, but if colleagues believe that the depravities of Daesh are being undertaken with genocidal intent, we have already waited far too long to recognise it.

Yesterday evening, here in the UK Parliament, we heard the truly harrowing personal testimony of a brave 16-year-old Yazidi girl called Ekhlas. She was seized by Daesh from her home, along with others from her community in Sinjar in northern Iraq. At the age of 15, she saw her father and brother killed in front of her. She told of how every girl in her community over eight, including herself, was imprisoned and raped. She spoke of witnessing her friends being raped and hearing their screams, and of seeing a girl aged nine being raped by so many men that she died. Many young girls had their fragile bodies rendered incapable of pregnancy, and others who were far too young to be so were made pregnant. Horrifically, she spoke of seeing a two-year-old boy being killed and of his body parts being ground down and fed to his own mother. She told of children being brainwashed and forced to kill their own parents. Fortunately, she managed to escape the prison during a bombardment of the area around it. Others are not so fortunate.

We heard from another women, Yvette, who had come directly from Syria for last night’s meeting. She spoke of Christians being killed and tortured, and of children being beheaded in front of their parents. She showed us recent film footage of herself talking with mothers—more than one—who had seen their own children crucified. Another woman had seen 250 children put through a dough kneader and burnt in an oven. The oldest was four years old. She told us of a mother with a two-month-old baby. When Daesh knocked at the front door of her house and ordered the entire family out, she pleaded with them to let her collect her child from another room. They told her, “No. Go. It is ours now.”

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing forward this very important debate. She is making a powerful speech. Every year, Members of this House sign the holocaust book of commitment, making the pledge that that terrible genocide will never be forgotten. I have personally signed a pledge that I will never walk on by. Does she agree that today we have the opportunity to make sure that none of us walks on by as we see this terrible genocide unfold?

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely do. After the horrors of the holocaust, the words, “Never again” resounded through civilisation. We must not let them resound again.

Speaking to MPs at yesterday’s meeting, the young girl Ekhlas implored us:

“Listen to me, help the girls, help those in captivity; I am pleading with you, let us come together and call this what it is: a genocide. This is about human dignity. You have a responsibility. ISIS are committing a genocide, because they are trying to wipe us out.”

Genocide is an internationally recognised term, defined in the 1948 convention on genocide, to which we are a signatory as a country, as

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…Killing…Causing serious bodily or mental harm… Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions…calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…Imposing measures intended to prevent births…Forcibly transferring children”.

I put it to the House that not just one but every single one of those criteria was satisfied by the two testimonies yesterday.