Deaths At least a thousand Locations Iraq, Syria | Start date June 11, 2014 | |
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Target mostly Arab Christians, Levantines, Armenians, Arameans, Assyrians/Syriacs, or Chaldeans and Copts Attack type Ethnic cleansing, abuse, and forced conversions to Sunni Islam Victims 200,000 Assyrian refugees Perpetrators Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Defenders Syriac Military Council
Sutoro
Nineveh Plain Protection Units
Qaraqosh Protection Committee
Dwekh Nawsha
Sootoro
Hezbollah
Iraqi Armed Forces
Syrian Armed Forces
Lebanese Armed Forces Similar 2015 Sana'a mosque b, Curtis Culwell Center att, 2015 Beirut bombings, 2015 Suruç bombing, 2014 Saint‑Jean‑sur‑Richelieu ramming | ||
The genocide of Christians by ISIL refers to the genocide of Christian minorities, within its region of control in Iraq, Syria and Libya by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following its takeover of parts of Northern Iraq in June 2014.
Contents
- Background
- Fall of Mosul and the Ninewa Plain
- Beheading of Copts
- Khabur valley offensive
- Reactions
- References
According to US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez, "While the majority of victims in the conflict raging in Syria and Iraq have been Muslims, Christians have borne a heavy burden given their small numbers."
On February 3, 2016, the European Union recognized the persecution of Christians by Islamic State in Syria as genocide. The vote was unanimous. The United States followed suit on March 15, 2016, in declaring these atrocities as genocide. The vote was unanimous. On April 20, 2016, British Parliament voted unanimously to denounce the actions as genocide. A similar motion however failed in Canada when it was opposed by the majority of MPs in Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.
Background
The mass flight and expulsion of ethnic Assyrians from Iraq is a process which initiated from the beginning of Iraq War in 2003 and continues to this day. Leaders of Iraq's Assyrian community estimate that over two-thirds of the Iraqi Assyrian population may have fled the country or been internally displaced since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 until 2011. Reports suggest that whole neighborhoods of Assyrians have cleared out in the cities of Baghdad and Basra, and that both Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups and militias have threatened Assyrian Christians. Following the campaign of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq in August 2014, one quarter of the remaining Iraqi Assyrians fled the Jihadists, finding refuge in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.
Fall of Mosul and the Ninewa Plain
After the fall of Mosul, ISIS demanded Assyrian Christians in the city to convert to Islam, pay tribute, or face execution, by July 19, 2014. ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi further noted that Christians who do not agree with those terms must "leave the borders of the Islamic Caliphate" within a specified deadline. This resulted in a complete Assyrian Christian exodus from Mosul, marking the end of 1600 years of continuous Christian presence. A church mass was not held in Mosul for the first time in 1,800 years.
ISIL has already set similar rules for Christians for other cities and towns, including its de facto capital Raqqa. However, on 29 March 2016, ISIL issued a decree preventing Christians from leaving Raqqa.
ISIS had also been seen marking Christian homes with the letter nūn for Nassarah ("Christian"). Several religious buildings were seized and subsequently demolished, most notably Mar Behnam Monastery.
By August 7, ISIS captured the primarily Assyrian towns of Qaraqosh, Tel Keppe, Bartella, and Karamlish, prompting the residents to flee. More than 100,000 Iraqi Christians were forced to flee their homes and leave all their property behind after ISIS invaded Qaraqosh and surrounding towns in the Nineveh Plains Province of Iraq.
In early November 2014, a "price list" for Yazidi and Christian females surfaced online. While human rights NGO Defend International immediately verified the document's authenticity, UN official Zainab Bangura didn't confirm it to be genuine before August 2015.
Beheading of Copts
On February 12, 2015, the ISIL released a report in their online magazine Dabiq showing photos of 21 Egyptian Copts migrant workers that they had kidnapped in the city of Sirte, Libya, and whom they threatened to kill to "avenge the [alleged] kidnapping of Muslim women by the Egyptian Coptic Church". The men, who came from different villages in Egypt, 13 of them from Al-Our, Minya Governorate, were kidnapped in Sirte in two separate attacks on December 27, 2014, and in January 2015.
Khabur valley offensive
On 23 February 2015, in response to a major Kurdish offensive in the Al-Hasakah Governorate, ISIL abducted 150 Assyrians from villages near Tell Tamer in northeastern Syria, after launching a large offensive in the region.
According to US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez, of the 232 of the Assyrians kidnapped in the ISIS attack on the Assyrian Christian farming villages on the banks of the Khabur River in Northeast Syria, 51 were children and 84 women. "Most of them remain in captivity with one account claiming that ISIS is demanding $22 million (or roughly $100,000 per person) for their release."
On 8 October, ISIL released a video showing three of the Assyrian men kidnapped in Khabur being executed. It was reported that 202 of the 253 kidnapped Assyrians were still in captivity, each one with a demanded ransom of $100,000.
Reactions
On 2 and 3 August 2014, thousands of Assyrians/Syriacs of the diaspora protested the persecution of their fellow Assyrians within Iraq and Syria, demanding a United Nations-led creation of a safe haven for minorities in the Nineveh Plains.
In October 2014, Kurdish-Danish human rights activist Widad Akrawi dedicated her 2014 International Pfeffer Peace Award "to all victims of persecution, particularly the Yazidis, Christians, and all residents of Kobanê region." Chaldean Catholic Father Douglas Al-Bazi has spoken out strongly against the genocide.
In December 2015, at a Townhall event, the American presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called the systematic persecution genocide.
In February 2016, Lars Adaktusson, Swedish member of the European Parliament from the EPP Group, said of the unanimous vote to recognize atrocities as genocide: "It gives the victims of the atrocities a chance to get their human dignity restored. It's also a historical confirmation that the European Parliament recognized what is going on and that they are suffering from the most despicable crime in the world, namely genocide."