Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Green]

Absolutely. This is why many people in Britain are leading the debate, because they recognise this to be a genocide, and I appreciate that many, if not all, Members in this Chamber agree with so many of the British people.

Daesh is creating what it would deem to be the caliphate, targeting those who do not fit into that vision. We have seen the systematic persecution, torture, enslavement, rape, kidnap and murder of a number of groups solely because of their religious identity. Daesh’s desire to establish a caliphate in the territory it holds is only a starting point; it is intending to draw many more Muslims from across the region, Europe and beyond. Clearly, Daesh is an expansionist organisation that has far greater territorial ambitions than to hold on to the land it currently has, and so, given the opportunity, it will take more land and subject more people to the systematic persecution and killing with which we have become familiar.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that this issue has many of the hallmarks of what we faced 75 years ago, in that Daesh is like National Socialism: it is not just a movement trying to take over one country; it is a movement trying to make a race and a belief dominant, and in doing so eliminate its opponents?

[Chris Green]

My hon. Friend is entirely right to speak of Daesh in this ideological way. People are getting caught up in this and are divorced from their humanity—the humanity they would have been raised with and that they see around them. More must be done to ensure that we tackle that extremism, be it online or from other sources.

The continued existence of Daesh means it will continue to be a draw and an inspiration if this caliphate does take hold and persist. To see that, we need only look at Libya, where Daesh-inspired terrorists kidnapped and beheaded 21 Coptic Christians—the anniversary of that was recently marked by a service in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft.

Genocide is fundamentally about committing acts with the intent to destroy, in part or in whole, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Although the classification of “genocide” is a matter of legal rather than political interpretation, for the international courts and the United Nations Security Council, this is not simply a debate about semantics. Furthermore, it is important for the British people, through their Government and the media, to understand what is going on in the middle east. Does the term “human rights violation” really fit what we see happening to Christians in the region? Can the systematic and targeted attacks on the Yazidis really be understood by referring to them as one of a number of middle eastern “humanitarian crises”?

The UK is playing a leading role in a global coalition of 66 countries and international organisations responding to Daesh’s inhumanity, but I join the voices of many in this House by asking the Government to make a referral to the UN Security Council. A referral from the Security Council is the only means by which the International Criminal Court can investigate and prosecute these acts of genocide. Genocide is understood by most to be the gravest crime against humanity, and this is what is being perpetrated by Daesh. We have a responsibility as a democratic nation to apply pressure to the international judicial bodies.