Yesterday, February 4th, 2016, European Parliament adopted with a large majority by a show of hands the joint motion for a “Resolution on the systematic mass murder of religious minorities by the so-called ‘ISIS/Daesh’”.
The document voted by the European Parliament has a special significance, especially for the Christian minority from the Middle East. The Resolution asks the recognition by the UN Security Council as genocide, the crimes commited by Daesh upon religious minorities, as it is defined by United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 9 December 1948.
During the debates preceding the vote, Ramona Manescu MEP held a declaration in the plenary session of the Parliament, stating: ”we all know the definition of Genocide. We learned hard way, after the horrible experience of the Second World War, when we said „NEVER AGAIN”, but still the world experienced Cambodian Genocide, Rwandese Genocide, Bosnian Genocide and Darfuri Genocide. If we put next to this definition the atrocities targeting Yazidis, Iraqi Christians, Turkmen, Sabea-Mandeans, Kaka’e, Kurds and Shi’a minorities under Daesh controlled territory we see the match: we are talking about documented mass imprisonment, execution by stoning, amputations, forced abortion, forced conversion to Islam, child conscription, murder of young children, sex slavery, and torture.”
”The proofs regarding Yazidi minority are already generally known and accepted. But the same things are happening to all the other minorities, and the proofs are overwhelming: from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi video statement claiming that “coexistence with Jews and Christians” is impossible according to the Quran and the “explicit statement” of Allah till the Gothenburg, Sweden, where Daesh followers went to an Assyrian Christian man’s restaurant (Markus Samuelsson) and put on the walls: “convert or die” and “the caliphate is here” – all the actions of Daesh are consistent with a clear intention to „destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. We must not be afraid to face the reality and accept the facts. All religious minorities in Daesh controlled territory are facing extinction.” Continued the EPP / PNL euro parliamentary.
In her statement Ramona Mănescu added: ”out of all, Christian minority in Middle East, decreased form 20% to just 5%. Under Daesh, in areas that were traditional multi-religious for the last two thousand years, we see a complete annihilation of the Christians. In Iraq, their number dropped from 1.4 million to just 275.000 and in Syria, more than 50% of the Christians disappeared in the last five years.”
At the end of her speech, Mrs Manescu concluded: ”admitting this reality would bring great moral pressure on European Institutions, Member States but also to the whole international community to take more action than they are currently taking. It will also bring up the „responsibility to protect principle” for the international community that has to take collective action to protect populations, in accordance with the UN Charter. It is already very late. If we don’t act today, it will be, once more, too late.”
