Yezidi mayor confident world community will recognize ISIS crimes as genocide
DOHUK, Kurdistan Region — The mayor of the Yezidi city of Shingal says he is confident that the international community will recognize the ISIS atrocity as genocide against Yezidi people in the near future.
Mahma Khalil, who recently visited the United Nations, told Rudaw on Tuesday that most member states agreed that the mass killings against Yezidis should be recognized as genocide under international law and legal actions taken against its perpetrators.
“I think it is a question of time when the international community will directly address the mass slaughter as genocide,” Mahma Khalil said, adding that the absolute majority of the UN member states had already addressed the ISIS assault as genocide.
A special UN commission concluded on June 15 after lengthy investigations that the violations committed by the ISIS militants against the Yezidi minority in Iraq amount to genocide.
“ISIS has sought to erase the Yezidis through killings; sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm,” the UN report said.
According to official government reports nearly 6000 Yezidi men, women and children were abducted in the first days of ISIS attack on Shingal in August last year.
Many of the female prisoners were transferred to Syria where they were treated as war trophies, eyewitnesses have told Human Rights’ Watch.
Iraq is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has effectively made it impossible for the world body to take legal actions against mass crimes committed inside that country.
Mahma Khalil, who recently visited the United Nations, told Rudaw on Tuesday that most member states agreed that the mass killings against Yezidis should be recognized as genocide under international law and legal actions taken against its perpetrators.
“I think it is a question of time when the international community will directly address the mass slaughter as genocide,” Mahma Khalil said, adding that the absolute majority of the UN member states had already addressed the ISIS assault as genocide.
A special UN commission concluded on June 15 after lengthy investigations that the violations committed by the ISIS militants against the Yezidi minority in Iraq amount to genocide.
“ISIS has sought to erase the Yezidis through killings; sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm,” the UN report said.
According to official government reports nearly 6000 Yezidi men, women and children were abducted in the first days of ISIS attack on Shingal in August last year.
Many of the female prisoners were transferred to Syria where they were treated as war trophies, eyewitnesses have told Human Rights’ Watch.
Iraq is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has effectively made it impossible for the world body to take legal actions against mass crimes committed inside that country.