Religious groups call on U.S. to label ISIS crimes genocide

WASHINGTON—Religious groups teamed-up this week to ratchet pressure on the United States government to recognize the killings of Christians in Islamic State-controlled territories as genocide.

“History will record the recent atrocities committed against religious minorities in the Middle East as genocide,” said Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus at a news conference Thursday. “The question is whether America will be remembered as courageous.”

The Knights of Columbus co-authored a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Feb. 4 requesting a meeting to detail the evidence of genocide against Christians in places such as Iraq and Syria. Without a response, the Knights of Columbus partnered with In Defense of Christians to write 278-page report as an “encyclopedia of evidence” on the Christians killed, kidnapped, and displaced in areas controlled by Islamic State (ISIS). The groups hope to use the report as ammunition to get the Obama administration to recognize the genocidal attacks against Christians.

The report, which Anderson and others presented to the State Department on Wednesday, details hundreds of attacks against Christians and Christian churches in Iraq and Syria. It includes eye-witness testimony from those impacted in the region and a chronological list of each known attack.

At the news conference Thursday, Anderson brought with him a panel of Christian persecution experts, including several victims of ISIS attacks.

Douglas al-Bazi, a Chaldean priest from Iraq, was among the first to take in refugees from Mosul and other parts of northern Iraq when ISIS invaded in 2014. ISIS militants shot al-Bazi in the leg, burned his church to the ground, and held him hostage because of his faith.

“When Americans hear where I am from, people ask me all the time how life is in Iraq,” al-Bazi said. “Actually, the answer is quite easy, there is no life in Iraq.”

When al-Bazi, who now runs a refugee camp in Erbil, Iraq, visits the U.S., he brings with him a short-sleeved plaid shirt stained in his own blood, a symbol he uses to express the danger he and other Christians face in the region.

“If we are not calling this genocide, then we are not telling the truth,” he said.

Anderson noted the State Department is quick to call ISIS attacks “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing,” but not genocide.

Kerry told a House Appropriations Subcommittee two weeks ago that his department is carefully reviewing the legal standards and precedents to make a judgment against ISIS.

But the report comes at a critical moment. Kerry has until March 17 to make a declaration of Christian genocide or not, according to a provision in the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress.

The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians also created an online petition to help raise awareness ahead of unveiling the report to the State Department. To date, the petition has over 64,000 signatures.

“We are obligated to take steps against the crimes of genocide—what those next steps are will be up to the current president and the next president to decide,” Anderson said. “But a declaration of genocide from the United States government is a key component.”