Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Pakistan religious minorities, and of the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief—for those with Christian beliefs, those with other beliefs and those with no beliefs, who the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) mentioned in his intervention.

The organisation that we are talking about has many names—IS, Islamic State, ISIL, ISIS and Daesh—and many guises but, above all, it is made up of systematic, psychopathic serial killers. The subject of the debate is clear: it is about ethnic and religious minorities such as the Yazidis and the Christians. I am pleased to see the Minister in the Chamber and look forward to hearing his response. We have talked about the matter this year on a personal basis. I hope that today Members will express ourselves clearly about what we wish to do regarding the word “genocide”. We have heard many powerful, passionate and focused speeches, and I particularly want to highlight the speech made by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who set the scene very well. I am pleased to have her not only as a colleague, but as a friend.

The Daesh atrocities rival any atrocity in modern history. Too many people turn a blind eye or offer only weak words, and some even attempt to rationalise Daesh’s actions. Strong words have been spoken in the House today, and what this self-declared state is doing is absolutely disgraceful. Will it care if its actions are called genocide or not? No, it will not, but we in this House and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should set the bar for the rest of the international community by saying that this cannot go on without it being condemned to the utmost and labelled appropriately as what it is—genocide. I correspond with some 90 churches in my constituency, and they feel very strongly about this brutality, violence, depravity and evil. We must be ever mindful of the fact that those who survive physically are traumatised forever.

Islamic State militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves and killing other youth by means including crucifixion or burial alive. They are given a “convert or die” ultimatum—that is genocide. Twenty-one Egyptian Christians were kidnapped in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte in two separate incidents in December 2014 and January 2015. In February 2015, they were beheaded on a Libyan beach in a chilling propaganda video produced by the self-declared Islamic State—that is genocide. After capturing the key strategic town of al-Baghdadi, which is just five miles from the al-Asad air base, Daesh rounded up 45 civilians from the town, some of whom were thought to be Iraqi security forces and their families, and burned them all alive—that is genocide.

On 10 June 2014, Daesh took some 600 male prisoners into the desert near Mosul in Iraq and initiated a mass execution. Approximately 30 men survived by rolling into the mass grave with the dead bodies. The pictures are absolutely chilling and call to mind terrifying memories of the worst genocide of the 20th century. A survivor recounts a Daesh leader saying:

“The Sunnis must stand on one side. The Shi’a, Kurds and Yazidis must stand on the other. If I find out that a Shi’a is among the Sunnis, I am going to cut off his head with a sheet of metal.”

Such words are spoken by those in Daesh who have a hatred for everyone who is not of their kind.

The men were interrogated about their beliefs, names, home towns and other details. Witnesses said that about 100 Shi’a prisoners were successful at pretending to be Sunni to escape further violence. The remaining Shi’a, Kurdish, Christian and Yazidi prisoners were then searched. Everything was taken from them: their money, their watches, their rings, their jewellery and their identity cards. One survivor said:

“The moment they made us give up all of our possessions, I knew they were going to kill us.”

The prisoners had been given no food or water for 24 hours, but Daesh militants promised them supplies as they drove deeper into the desert. When they arrived, the militants told them,

“you’ll have water in paradise.”

The militants then made the men kneel in a single line along the rim of a curved ravine six to 12 feet deep. They were asked to number themselves off, with each person forced to

“raise his hand and say his number.”

Survivors said that many of the gunmen were young. Some appeared nervous, while others were excited, including some who joked at the end of the count, when they shot the prisoners, that they had “a nice-size head”, and some who said that they were going to “eat well tonight”. That is genocide.

Further documented incidents include the 1,700 captives executed in Tikrit in Iraq, the 650 people executed in Mosul in Iraq, the 1,000 Turks who were massacred, including some 100 children, and the more than 2,000 women and children who have been kidnapped. In the UN’s words, this is

“systematic hunting of members of ethnic and religious groups”—

that is genocide. Women have been raped and sold, and young boys have been executed. Girls have been enslaved for sexual abuse, and children have been recruited as suicide bombers. There are more than 1 million refugees, half of them children.

I am conscious of the time, but it might help the Minister—I hope it does—if I mention what has happened in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly asked the Attorney General for Northern Ireland for direction on

“whether the violence currently being perpetrated against Christians and other minority religious groups (notably Yazidis and members of certain Islamic communities) by Daesh…in territory controlled by them in Syria and Iraq constitutes genocide within the meaning of the December 9 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ‘the Genocide Convention’.”

He replied:

“If behaviour can be properly classified as genocide then a range of international law consequences ensue. The first of these consequences is the activation of the twofold undertaking by contracting parties contained in Article 1 of the Genocide Convention to prevent and to punish genocide. Article 1 reads as follows:

‘The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.’”

The day of reckoning for Daesh is here. The Attorney General for Northern Ireland has said:

“it seems to me that actual or potential victims of genocide have a right to truthful acknowledgement of their circumstances and that governments are under a corresponding duty to make such acknowledgements...I have no hesitation in saying that the violence perpetrated against these protected groups does constitute genocide.”

I hope that the Minister will keep in mind the words of the Attorney General for Northern Ireland and what he has decreed in Northern Ireland because, legally, it might help the Minister to make a decision on this matter.

Amnesty International’s publication “Ethnic Cleansing on a Historic Scale: Islamic State’s Systematic Targeting of Minorities in Northern Iraq” details, with eyewitness testimony, several more Daesh atrocities in Iraq. At least 100 men and boys have been herded together and shot to death in Kocho. Scores of men and boys have been summarily executed in Qiniyeh. More than 50 men have been rounded up and shot dead near Jdali. The dead boys, the raped girls and the captive villagers gunned down for refusing to renounce their faith are the people who die every day at the hands of ISIS or Daesh.

This is not a horror movie—I wish it was. This is taking place just a plane flight away. It is time we called this what it is: it is systematic, it is calculated, and it is genocide.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

This has been an excellent debate. Time prevents me from answering all the questions, so I shall do as I have done on previous occasions and write to hon. Members in detail. Some excellent ideas and thoughts have emerged, such as the protection of mass graves and the appointment of a global envoy for religious freedom. I will be in touch on those matters.

I begin, as others have done, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this important debate. I have listened, No. 10 has listened and the nation has listened to the will of the Chamber today. That is important. I commend the efforts of Members in all parts of the House who have worked tirelessly to ensure that the voices of those who have been murdered, persecuted or silenced by Daesh are heard.

The harrowing accounts that we have heard today of the brutal persecution of Christians, Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities are heartbreaking. Some of those communities lived peacefully side by side for generations before that barbaric organisation forced them to flee their homes. Daesh’s crimes go beyond the horrors of rape and murder; it has destroyed a generations-old culture. The Government have repeatedly made clear our utter condemnation of the unspeakable crimes that Daesh commits against Christians, Yazidis and other communities, including Muslims, who still account for the majority of victims. We are working tirelessly to defeat Daesh and put an end to that violence.

This is not the first time that I have commented on this matter; it is the third time. I repeat what I said in Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions last week. I believe that genocide has taken place, but as the Prime Minister has said, genocide is a matter of legal rather than political opinion. We as the Government are not the prosecutor, the judge or the jury. Such matters are for the UN Security Council. However, we have a place—

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

[Mr Ellwood]

I will not give way.

We have a place on the UN Security Council. That is important. Any referral to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council will be possible only with a united Council and ideally with the co-operation of countries in which alleged crimes have been committed. However, I remind the House that when efforts were made to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC in 2014, that was vetoed by Russia and China. We expect that any Security Council resolution seeking to refer the situation in Iraq or Syria to the ICC against those countries could very well be blocked again, but further discussions are taking place. We are now in a different place from where we were in 2014.