Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Debate between Stephen Timms and Rehman Chishti

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not clear to me how this can happen in the United Kingdom if the Government do not act. Last night we heard from a young woman, who has been referred to already, who had seen her father and brothers killed simply for being Yazidis. She herself had been raped and enslaved. She made it very clear in her evidence that what was going on was genocide, of Yazidis and also of Christians—she made it clear that Christians were included in the genocide—and as US Secretary of State John Kerry pointed out, it is certainly the case that Shi’a Muslims have been victims of genocide as well.

[Rehman Chishti]

The right hon. Gentleman says that Shi’a Muslims have also been killed by Daesh. Does he agree that Daesh itself has no religion, in that it kills Muslims who stand in the way of its warped ideology? Whatever a person’s faith, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, if they stand against Daesh, they will be killed.

[Stephen Timms]

I think the hon. Gentleman is right, but it is clear that Shi’a Muslims have been singled out. For example, in a prison just north of Mosul, nearly 600 were picked out from the rest of the inmates because they were Turkmen Shi’a Muslims, and were machine-gunned one by one. I hope that we can make a clear statement today that this is genocide, both to express solidarity with Yazidis, Christians and Shi’a Muslims who are the victims of this horrifying brutality, and to make clear our determination to ensure that those responsible face prosecution and a just punishment for what they have done.

I want to make some observations on how we can deal with the commitment to religious freedom that we all espouse. I recognise and pay tribute to the work of past and present Ministers on this, but we should be doing more. Others are doing more, and we should as well. I commend to the Minister an idea that was in the last Labour party election manifesto: the Government should appoint a global envoy for religious freedom, who would report directly to the Prime Minister, and establish within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a multi-faith advisory council on religious freedom. That would be an important way for us to acknowledge and publicly commit to the importance of British influence being wielded on this front, through the work of Ministers and the Foreign Office around the world.

The Canadian Government deserve credit for establishing an Office of Religious Freedom. It has had a positive impact, but I am sorry to hear that it is now being wound down. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom was established a long time ago, in 1998, and it is an attractive model, with commissioners appointed by the President and by the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Last December, the commission called for the US Government to designate the Christian, Yazidi, Turkmen and Shabak communities in Iraq and Syria as victims of genocide by ISIL.