ICC Note: Today is the first organized international day to commemorate the victims of genocide. While many rightfully look back to genocides from previous decades and centuries, the most troubling fact is the on-going genocide taking place along religious lines in the Middle East and Africa today. Christians and other religious minorities are being brutalized by ISIS and other Islamic extremists groups and the intent is not just violence, but the elimination of those communities in entire geographic areas. These factors are pushing many to advocate for the formal recognition of what is going on as genocide. Recognition brings with it many legal and practical measures that help to provide safety and support for these victims.  

12/09/2015 Middle East (Christian Today) – The brutal persecution of Christians in the Middle East must be acknowledged as genocide, the European Syriac Union said today, on the first ever international day to commemorate the victims of genocide.

“It is our moral and historical duty” to acknowledge that “Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian people face another genocide in the Middle East and existential threat,” a statement from the ESU said.

“Commemoration of Victims of Genocides and Crimes against Humanity is [an] essential responsibility to the humanity and international community. Commemoration [of] past atrocities around the world is [a] strong sign of remembrance of the victims and solidarity with the current threatened groups, ethnic and religious communities.”

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom on Monday called for groups systematically persecuted by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – Christians, Yazidis, Shi’as, Turkmen and Shabaks – to be recognised as victims of genocide.

“The hallmark of genocide is the intent to destroy a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group, in whole or in part,” said USCIRF chairman Robert George.

“ISIL’s intent to destroy religious groups that do not subscribe to its extremist ideology in the areas in Iraq and Syria that it controls, or seeks to control, is evident in, not only its barbarous acts, but also its own propaganda.”

…