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Iraq: As ISIS massacres Christians, Lord Alton asks: Does anybody care?


Families fleeing in June - image ACN

Families fleeing in June - image ACN

This morning I received a plaintiff gut wrenching message from a family who have fled from Nineveh. Describing how they were overwhelmed by ISIS militias they fled "to protect our children and sisters and wives." They asked "where is the UN? Where is NATO? Where is EU and US? Where is Putin?"

"Nobody cares about us. We are fleeing from one place to another, we are exhausted. We are betrayed. We are being massacred and nobody cares. We speak the language of Jesus, we are the first Christians but the Christian world has forgotten us. We are the indigenous people of Nineveh and everybody wants to see us killed."

They simply plead that the international community must "do what you can to stop this Genocide.”

It is welcome that belatedly the UK Cobra committee has at last met to discuss this unfoldng catastrophe and that the US military aircraft have begun air-dropping supplies to members of Iraq’s Yazidi community. Trapped on a mountain without food and water after they fled the advance of Islamic State fighters, they have been left with the cruel choice of starving to death or being murdered by Jihadists.

It is to the credit of Kurdish and Shiite towns that they have opened their doors to fleeing Christians, forced to leave Mosul and other areas that fell under the control of the Islamic State.

Many have listened, as we should do, to the voice of Muslim religious leaders such as Sayyed Hussein al-Sadr who issued a statement on the displacement of Christians from Mosul, affirming their “national belonging to Iraq.”. He rightly said “They are our brothers in the country and in humanity, and have equal rights with all Iraqis.” But now those who have opened their homes are the target of the Islamic State.

If Iraq's minorities are to be spared "slaughter-in-waiting", and if genocide is to be headed off, then Iraq's authorities and the Kurdish Peshmerga must urgently be given every assistance in resisting ISIS. Fail to do this, fail now to protect minorities like the Yezidis and Christians, and the Islamic State, will be further emboldened. As their genocidal campaign engulfs all who refuse to accept their dictats they will doubtless be echoing Hitler's famous question "who now remembers the Armenians?" No one needs to be reminded of the consequences of the failure to protect the Armenians and all the other minorities slaughtered in every genocide which has followed.

The indifference of many western governments to the plight of Iraq's minorities is truly shocking. The Islamic State is waging a genocidal war against Christians, Yezidis and other minorities and the international community looks away. It has now seized territory that is almost two-thirds the size of Great Britain.

Houses have been looted and robbed. Graves and shrines have been demolished. Crosses smashed and removed from churches. And beyond this destruction is the visceral hatred directed at an ancient people who had lived here in peace alongside their neighbours for centuries.

Iraqi Christians are the original residents of Mesopotamia - descendants of the ancient Babylonians, Chaldeans, Assyrians and a large number of Arab tribes, present in Iraq since the First Century AD.

2,000 years later, the descendants of these original Christians have seen their homes daubed with the identifying symbol of Nazarenes and, if they refuse to convert, are forced to leave or be executed.

Welcome attempts to provide armed protection, by the Kurdish Peshmerga, are reported, in some cases, to have been overwhelmed by ISIS. UNICEF have reported the deaths of around 40 Yezidi children. Christian families forced to leave in only the clothes which they were wearing have been given temporary refuge and are hanging on to life by their finger tips.

In the face of this religious cleansing and unfolding human rights catastrophe the silence of President Obama, Secretary Kerry along with the leaders of most Western governments has created the impression of indifference.

Britain has been criticised by the Church of England for failing to at least follow the French lead in providing asylum. The bishops are right to be critical and, in the short term, asylum and the provision of humanitarian relief are essential. But, in the long term, it is unconscionable that the international community should collectively shrug its shoulders with barely a murmur of protest and accept these crimes against humanity.

In Bosnia and Rwanda the international community failed persecuted minorities. We always say "never again" but in Mosul and Nineveh it's never again all over again. It's yet another example of the abject failure to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN's doctrine of "a responsibility to protect."

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