Islamic State is attempting to destroy the Yazidi population in Syria and Iraq through killings, sexual slavery, and other crimes, acts that United Nations investigators say amount to the crime of genocide being committed by the militants against the ethno-religious group of 400,000 people.
The genocide accusations were made in a UN report released on Thursday based on interviews with dozens of survivors. The report found that the Islamist militants had been systematically capturing Yazidis in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, seeking to “erase their identity” in a campaign that met the definition of the crime as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
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“The genocide of the Yazidis is ongoing,” the report said.
Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn said they had obtained “detailed information on places, violations and names of the perpetrators,” and had begun sharing information with some national authorities who are prosecuting foreign fighters.
Speaking at a news briefing on Thursday, Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the commission of inquiry called for more action.
“The crime of genocide must trigger much more assertive action at the political level, including at the Security Council,” Pinheiro said.
The four independent commissioners behind the investigation also urged major powers to rescue at least 3,200 women and children still held by Islamic State (ISIS) and to refer the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution.
“ISIS made no secret of its intent to destroy the Yazidis of Sinjar, and that is one of the elements that allowed us to conclude their actions amount to genocide,” said another investigator, Carla del Ponte. “Of course, we regard that as a road map for prosecution, for future prosecution.”
The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State, which aims to set up a theocratic caliphate in Syria and Iraq based on a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam, systematically killed, captured or enslaved thousands of Yazidis when it overran the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014. Several mass graves have since been uncovered.
The militant group tried to erase the Yazidis’ identity by forcing men to choose between conversion to Islam and death, raping girls as young as nine, selling women at slave markets, and drafting boys to fight, the report said.
“No other religious group present in ISIS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq has been subjected to the destruction that the Yazidis have suffered,” the report said.
“The scale of atrocities committed, their general nature, and the fact of deliberately and systematically targeting victims on account of their membership in a particular group, while excluding members of other groups, were other factors from which the Commission was able to infer genocidal intent.”
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