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2017 SESSION

17101838D
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 569
Offered January 11, 2017
Prefiled December 29, 2016
Expressing the sense of the General Assembly that the atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria include war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
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Patrons-- Marshall, R.G. and Cole
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Referred to Committee on Rules
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WHEREAS, Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities have been an integral part of the cultural fabric of the Middle East for millennia; and

WHEREAS, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated extremists are committing egregious atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, including Christians (including Assyrian Chaldean Syriac, Armenian, and Melkite communities, among others), Yezidis, Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean-Mandeans, and Kaka'i, among others; and

WHEREAS, ISIL specifically targets these religious and ethnic minorities, intending to kill them or force their submission, conversion, or expulsion; and

WHEREAS, religious and ethnic minorities have been murdered, subjugated, forced to emigrate, and subjected to grievous bodily and psychological harm, kidnapping, human trafficking, torture, and rape; and

WHEREAS, ISIL engages in, and publicly argues in favor of, the sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women, including prepubescent girls; and

WHEREAS, ISIL atrocities against Christians, Yezidis, and other minorities have included mass murder, crucifixions, beheadings, rape, torture, enslavement, kidnapping of children, and other violence deliberately calculated to eliminate their communities from the so-called Islamic State; and

WHEREAS, ISIL has deliberately destroyed and looted numerous cultural sites, religious shrines, churches, monasteries, and museums in order to eradicate the cultures of ethnic and religious minorities from the territory it attempts to control; and

WHEREAS, these atrocities have been undertaken with the specific intent to bring about the eradication of those communities and the destruction of their cultural heritage; and

WHEREAS, ISIL operations have in fact driven minority religious and ethnic communities from their ancestral homelands; and

WHEREAS, under applicable international law referenced in § 2441 of Title 18 of the United States Code, murder, torture, mutilation, rape, cruel treatment, and hostage-taking of non-combatants constitute war crimes; and

WHEREAS, crimes against humanity, as defined by the International Military Tribunal convened at Nuremberg in 1945, and in various international instruments since then, include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, as well as persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds in connection with such crimes; and

WHEREAS, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed and ratified by the United States, defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"; and

WHEREAS, on August 7, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that "ISIL's campaign of terror against the innocent, including Yezidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide"; and

WHEREAS, in August 2014, the United States conducted targeted airstrikes and humanitarian assistance operations to help break the siege of Mount Sinjar, saving the lives of thousands of Yezidi men, women, and children; and

WHEREAS, His Holiness, Pope Francis, has noted that "entire communities, especially—but not only—Christians and Yezidis have suffered and are still suffering inhuman violence because of their ethnic and religious identity" and that, for Christians being killed for their faith in the Middle East, "a form of genocide—I insist on the word—is taking place, and it must end"; and

WHEREAS, a March 13, 2015, report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed "acts of violence perpetrated [by ISIL] against civilians because of their affiliation or perceived affiliation to an ethnic or religious group" and stated that "[i]t is reasonable to conclude that some of these incidents, considering the overall information, may constitute genocide"; and

WHEREAS, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 13, 2015, Dominican Sister Diana Momeka, whose convent was driven from Mosul, Iraq, described the ISIL offensive as "cultural and human genocide" and stated that today "[t]he only Christians that remain in the Plain of Nineveh are those who are held as hostages"; and

WHEREAS, in December 2015, the United States Holocaust Museum's Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide issued a report focused on the treatment of minorities in Ninevah from June to August 2014, which found that ISIL had "targeted civilians based on group identity, committing mass atrocities to control, expel, and exterminate ethnic and religious minorities" and, in that context, "committed crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing against [Christian, Yezidi, Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean-Mandean, and Kaka'i] communities in Nineva" and "perpetrated genocide against the Yezidi people"; and

WHEREAS, on December 7, 2015, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called on the United States government "to designate the Christian, Yezidi, Shi'a, Turkmen, and Shabak communities of Iraq and Syria as victims of genocide by ISIL" and urged world leaders "to condemn the genocidal actions and crimes against humanity of ISIL that have been directed at these groups and other ethnic and religious groups"; and

WHEREAS, on February 3, 2016, the European Parliament expressed the view that ISIL "is committing genocide against Christians and Yezidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities"; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly recognize that the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL against Christians, Yezidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That it is the sense of the General Assembly that all governments, including the United States, and international organizations, including the United Nations and the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, should call ISIL atrocities by their rightful names: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That it is the sense of the General Assembly that the member states of the United Nations should coordinate urgently on measures to prevent ISIL from committing further war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq and Syria and to punish those responsible for these ongoing crimes, including by the collection and preservation of evidence and, if necessary, the establishment and operation of appropriate tribunals; and, be it

RESOLVED FINALLY, That the General Assembly recognize that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Lebanese Republic, the Republic of Turkey, and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq are to be commended for, and supported in, their efforts to shelter and protect those fleeing the violence of ISIL and other combatants until they can safely return to their homes in Iraq and Syria.