What’s in a name? Plenty when it comes to the word “genocide.”
For months now pressure has been mounting on the U.S. State Department to recognize as genocide the mass murders and other atrocities committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria against Christians and other religious minorities.
A recent United Nations report detailed ISIS killings of more than 18,800 people and the selling of 3,500 women and children into slavery — many as sex slaves — since 2014. Early in February the European Parliament voted resoundingly to designate the ISIS targeting of religious minorities as a genocide and called on all nations who are signatories to the U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948 to take action.
Russell Moore, president of Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, is among the 110 signers of a Feb. 17 letter to President Barack Obama urging the administration not to exclude Christians from a genocide designation at the hands of ISIS. Moore and others signing the letter became alarmed at that possibility after a report surfaced in mid-November 2015 that the State Department was preparing to label as genocide only the ISIS campaign against Iraq’s Yazidi sect.
“Thousands of our brothers and sisters in Christ are suffering targeted persecution at the hands of ISIS,” Moore said. “This isn’t just political unrest or a humanitarian catastrophe — it is the systematic destruction of an entire people.”
Recognition that Christians are victims of a genocide would allow them to be placed on refugee lists to immigrate to safety in the West. Refugee status is a necessity since radical Islam “hit squads” target them in the local refugee camps, according to Andrew Walther, Knights of Columbus vice president of media research and development, who has launched an online petition with In Defense of Christians garnering more than 20,000 signatures urging Secretary of State John Kerry to designate the slaughter as genocide.
Looming deadline
Kerry is reported to have told committees in both the House and the Senate in late February that the legal team was still evaluating the designation and would be coming up with a decision shortly, according to cnsnews.com. A March 17 deadline is looming because the Omnibus Fiscal Year Spending Bill for 2016 — signed into law by President Obama in December 2015 — mandated that the administration offer its designation of the crimes in the Middle East within 90 days.
A February article in The Christian Post quotes White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest as saying that the Obama “administration lawyers” are looking into the possibility of a genocide designation, but are concerned about the “legal ramifications” accompanying it.
What are those legal ramifications?
Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, said, “I wish I knew the answer to that. We in the Congress have been leaning on the administration to do more. But when it comes to that sort of thing, this administration is both slow and ponderous.”
Byrne contends that the Obama administration is irresolute on dealing with terrorism as a whole. “They have no plan. They don’t know what to do about ISIS or terrorism in general. That hampers U.S. efforts to take a leadership role in protecting victims and fighting terrorism.”
‘Absolutely genocide’
“The situation in the Middle East is absolutely genocide against Christians,” Byrne said. “Secretary Kerry should stop dragging his feet, recognize the obvious and work to ensure Christians in the Middle East receive the protection they deserve.”
One action gaining traction is House Congressional Resolution 75, which now has some 200 co-sponsors, including Byrne. The resolution states that “those who commit or support atrocities against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities — including Yezidis, Turkmen, Sabea-Mandeans, Kaka’e and Kurds — and who target them specifically for ethnic or religious reasons, are committing and are hereby declared to be committing ‘war crimes,’ ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide.’”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee markup on the resolution passed the committee vote March 2, although it is unclear when the measure will be brought to the floor for a full House vote, according to Elizabeth Chouldjian, a spokeswoman for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
ANCA is one of numerous organizations, religious leaders, politicians and scholars calling for the genocide designation. Some 1.5 million Armenians, predominantly Christian, died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, according to historians. The slaughter was characterized in 2015 by Pope Francis — on the 100th anniversary of the purge — as “the first genocide of the 20th century.” Loathe to anger Turkish allies, Presidents George W. Bush and Obama both resisted efforts in Congress to condemn the killings as genocide, according to a New York Times article.
Some suggest that political considerations are obstructing the current genocide designation.
Aram Hamparian, ANCA executive director, said, “We must, as Americans, elevate our government’s response to genocide from a political choice to a moral imperative. We cannot continue to treat the recognition of genocide as a geopolitical commodity to be bartered or bargained away. Our stand against genocide must be unconditional.”
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