ICC Note: In light of the terrible atrocities committed by ISIS in the Middle East against religious minorities, the U.S. Government is considering officially labeling them as genocide. Yet, the current information may limit the designation to only genocide against Yazidis and exclude Christians from the distinction. This has serious implications, and as demonstrated below the atrocities suffered by Christians seem to meet the standard set out for genocide.

11/14/2015 Iraq (AINA) – There are reports in the media that state the Obama Administration will designate ISIS’s attacks on Yazidis in Iraq as genocide, without giving the same designation to ISIS’s attacks on Assyrians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, even though these attacks targeted both groups and were conducted in tandem.

There is no question as to the suffering of the Yazidis and Assyrians. Thousands of Yazidis have been killed, Yazidi women have been captured and raped and sold as sex slaves. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been displaced. 200,000 Assyrians were driven from the Nineveh Plains in North Iraq last year (AINA 2014-08-07) in the ISIS attack that began — not coincidentally — on August 7, the Assyrian Martyrs Day. Most have not returned and are living as refugees in Arbel and Dohuk.

ISIS has destroyed or occupied 45 Assyrian churches in Mosul. It has killed Assyrians in Mosul. It has snatched Assyrian girls from the arms of their mothers, never to be seen again (AINA 2014-08-28).

In Syria, ISIS captured 500 Assyrians, and still holds about 400 of them for ransom. ISIS attacked 35 Assyrian villages on the Khabur on February 23, killing 4, capturing 253 and causing 3,000 Assyrians to flee (AINA 2015-02-23). It executed 3 of them on September 23 in a video (AINA 2015-10-08). On August 7 — again, not coincidentally — ISIS attacked Qaryatain and captured 250 Assyrians (AINA 2015-08-07).

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