[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 115 (Tuesday, July 22, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H6584-H6585]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, the international legal definition of the 
crime of genocide is found in article II of the 1948 Convention on the 
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
  It says:

       Genocide means any of the following acts committed with 
     intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, 
     racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the 
     group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of 
     the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of 
     life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in 
     whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent 
     births within the group; forcibly transferring children of 
     the group to another group.

  I believe that what is happening to the Christian community in Iraq 
is genocide. I also believe that it is a ``crime against humanity.''
  Last Thursday, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, more commonly 
referred to as ISIS, gave the few remaining Christians in Mosul until 
Saturday to leave or be killed.
  From The New York Times, it reads:

       Some went on foot, their cars having been confiscated. 
     Others rode bicycles or motor scooters. Few were able to take 
     anything of value as militants seized their money and 
     jewelry. Some--just a few because they were not healthy 
     enough to flee--submitted to the demands that they convert to 
     Islam to avoid being killed.

  ISIS is systematically targeting Christians and other religious 
minorities in Iraq for extinction.
  I will submit for the Record the complete article from The New York 
Times and an editorial from today's Wall Street Journal for history to 
see what is happening.

                [From the New York Times, July 21, 2014]

 Concern and Support for Iraqi Christians Forced by Militants to Flee 
                                 Mosul

       Baghdad.--A day after Christians fled Mosul, the northern 
     city controlled by Islamist extremists, under the threat of 
     death, Muslims and Christians gathered under the same roof--a 
     church roof--here on Sunday afternoon. By the time the piano 
     player had finished the Iraqi national anthem, and before the 
     prayers, Manhal Younis was crying.
       ``I can't feel my identity as an Iraqi Christian,'' she 
     said, her three little daughters hanging at her side.
       A Muslim woman sitting next to her in the pew reached out 
     and whispered, ``You are the true original people here, and 
     we are sorry for what has been done to you in the name of 
     Islam.''
       The warm scene here was an unusual counterpoint to the 
     wider story of Iraq's unraveling, as Sunni militants with the 
     Islamic State in Iraq and Syria gain territory and persecute 
     anyone who does not adhere to their harsh version of Islamic 
     law. On Saturday, to meet a deadline by the ISIS militants, 
     most Christians in Mosul, a community almost as old as 
     Christianity itself, left with little more than the clothes 
     they were wearing.
       The major players in the Iraq and Syria crisis are often 
     both allies and antagonists, working together on one front on 
     one day and at cross-purposes the next.
       Some went on foot, their cars having been confiscated; 
     others rode bicycles or motor scooters. Few were able to take 
     anything of value, as militants seized their money and 
     jewelry. Some--just a few, and because they were not healthy 
     enough to flee--submitted to demands that they convert to 
     Islam to avoid being killed.
       ``There are five Christian families who converted to Islam 
     because they were threatened with death,'' said Younadim 
     Kanna, a Christian and a member of Iraq's Parliament. ``They 
     did so just to stay alive.''
       On Sunday, outrage came from many corners of Iraq, and 
     beyond.
       In a public address, Pope Francis expressed his concern for 
     the Christians of Mosul and other parts of the Middle East, 
     ``where they have lived since the beginning of Christianity, 
     together with their fellow citizens, offering a meaningful 
     contribution to the good of society.''
       He continued: ``Today, they are persecuted. Our brothers 
     are persecuted and hunted away; they have to leave their 
     homes without being allowed to take anything with them.''
       Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, released 
     a statement condemning ``in the strongest terms the 
     systematic persecution of minority populations in Iraq'' and 
     particularly the threat against Christians.
       And Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is struggling 
     to remain in power as Iraq's political factions negotiate to 
     form a new government, said Sunday, ``The atrocities 
     perpetrated by ISIS against our Iraqi citizens, the 
     Christians in Nineveh Province and the attacks on the 
     churches and houses of worship in the areas that fall under 
     their control, reveal without any doubt the terrorist and 
     criminal nature of this extremist group that poses a 
     dangerous threat to the humanity and the heritage and legacy 
     that has been preserved over centuries.''
       He called on the ``whole world to tighten the siege on 
     those terrorists and stand as one force to confront them.'' 
     That was perhaps a reference to the influx of foreign 
     fighters into Iraq, many of whom have also fought in Syria's 
     civil war. On Sunday, ISIS issued a

[[Page H6585]]

     statement claiming responsibility for two suicide attacks in 
     Baghdad on Saturday, and said that one had been carried out 
     by a German citizen, and the other by a Syrian.
       The gathering on Sunday at St. George Chaldean Church, 
     built in 1964 and situated in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood, 
     was as much about Iraqi solidarity as it was a gesture of 
     condemnation for the persecution of Christians. In many ways 
     Iraq's struggle today is the same as it has been since the 
     country was founded nearly a century ago, at the end of World 
     War I: how to establish a national identity larger than a 
     particular faith or ethnicity.
       In the pews Muslims and Christians alike held signs that 
     read, ``I'm Iraqi. I'm Christian.'' Muhammad Aga, who 
     organized the event over Facebook, spoke, and listed Iraq's 
     many narrower identities: Christians, Arabs, Kurds, Shabaks, 
     Turkmen, Yazidis, Sunnis and Shiites. ``All of those people 
     who carry Iraqi identity,'' he said.
       The church's patriarch, Louis Raphael Sako, said, ``I carry 
     every Iraqi in my heart.''
       After the service, two men, cousins in their 60s, stood in 
     the church courtyard. They grew up in Mosul, and moved to 
     Baghdad as teenagers. They have witnessed much of Iraq's 
     traumatic history of coups, revolutions, wars and sectarian 
     cleansing, and have stayed the whole time.
       ``You have to be angry,'' said Faiz Faraj, 65, a retired 
     teacher. ``You must cry.''
       But, he said, ``Iraqis have suffered for a long time, but 
     this will pass.''
       His 9-year-old granddaughter, Lana Fanar, recited at the 
     service a poem written by a well-known Iraqi poet in 2006, as 
     Iraq was in the grip of sectarian killings. Its words could 
     be spoken of any of Iraq's previous traumas, or today:
       ``I cry for my country. I cry for Baghdad. I cry for the 
     history and the glory days. I cry for the artists, for the 
     water, for the trees. I cry for my religion. I cry for my 
     beliefs.''
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2014]

                     The Christian Purge From Mosul


      The Islamist attacks on non-Muslims are a problem for Islam

       Imagine if a fundamentalist Christian sect captured the 
     French city of Lyon and began a systematic purge of Muslims. 
     Their mosques were destroyed, their crescents defaced, the 
     Koran burned and then all Muslims forced to flee or face 
     execution. Such an event would be unthinkable today, and if 
     it did occur Pope Francis and all other Christian leaders 
     would denounce it and support efforts by governments to stop 
     it.
       Yet that is essentially what is happening in reverse now in 
     Mosul, as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham drives all 
     signs of Christianity from the ancient city. Christians have 
     lived in Mosul for nearly 2,000 years, but today they are 
     reliving the Muslim religious wars of the Middle Ages.
       They have been given a choice either to convert to Islam or 
     flee. They were warned before a weekend deadline that if they 
     remained and didn't convert, they would be killed. 
     Thousands--often entire families--have had to leave the city 
     with nothing more than their clothes as militants robbed them 
     of money or jewelry. Crosses have been destroyed across the 
     city.
       That such violent bigotry in the name of religion can exist 
     in the 21st century is hard for many in the Christian world 
     to believe, but that is part of the West's problem. Jews know 
     all too well that anti-Semitism can inspire murderous 
     behavior. But Christians or post-Christian secularists who 
     are content in their modern prosperity often prefer to turn 
     their heads or blame all religions as equally intolerant.
       Today's religious extremism is almost entirely Islamic. 
     While ISIS's purge may be the most brutal, Islamists in Egypt 
     have driven thousands of Coptic Christians from homes they've 
     occupied for centuries. The same is true across the Muslim 
     parts of Africa. This does not mean that all Muslims are 
     extremists, but it does mean that all Muslims have an 
     obligation to denounce and resist the extremists who murder 
     or subjugate in the name of Allah. Too few imams living in 
     the tolerant West will speak up against it.
       As for the post-Christian West, most elites may now be 
     nonbelievers. But a culture that fails to protect believers 
     may eventually find that it lacks the self-belief to protect 
     itself.

  Mr. WOLF. With the exception of Israel, the Bible contains more 
references to the cities, regions, and nations of ancient Iraq than any 
other country. The patriarch Abraham came from a city in Iraq called 
Ur. Isaac's bride, Rebekah, came from northwest Iraq. Jacob spent 20 
years in Iraq, and his sons--the 12 tribes of Israel--were born in 
northwest Iraq. A remarkable spiritual revival as told in the Book of 
Jonah occurred in Nineveh. The events of the Book of Esther took place 
in Iraq, as did the account of Daniel in the Lions' Den.
  Monday's New York Times' piece also quotes a Muslim woman at a prayer 
service on Sunday at a church in Baghdad, whispering to a Christian 
woman sitting in the pew next to her: ``You are the true original 
people here. We are so sorry for what has been done to you in the name 
of Islam.''
  On June 16, for the first time in 1,600 years, there was no mass said 
in Mosul.
  Pope Francis on Sunday expressed concern about what was unfolding in 
Mosul and in other parts of the Middle East, noting that these 
communities since the beginning of Christianity have ``coexisted there 
alongside their fellow citizens, making a significant contribution to 
the good of society. Today, they are persecuted,'' the Pope said. ``Our 
brothers are persecuted. They are cast out. They are forced to leave 
their homes without having the chance to take anything with them.''
  The United Nations released a statement attributed to Ban Ki-moon 
that, in part, said: ``The Secretary General reiterates that any 
systematic attack on the civilian population or segments of the 
civilian population because of their ethnic background, religious 
beliefs or faith may constitute a crime against humanity, for which 
those responsible must be held accountable.''
  Where is the Obama administration?
  In June, 55 Members of Congress--Republicans and Democrats--urged the 
Obama administration to actively engage with the Iraqi central 
government and the Kurdistan Regional Government to prioritize 
additional security support for especially vulnerable populations, 
notably Iraq's ancient Christian community, and provide emergency 
humanitarian assistance to these communities.

                              {time}  1215

  I want to read the last lines of our letter: ``Absent immediate 
action, we will most certainly witness the annihilation of an ancient 
faith community from the lands they have inhabited for centuries.''
  It is happening, Mr. Speaker. They are almost all gone, just as we 
predicted.
  The Obama administration has to make protecting this ancient 
community a priority. It needs to encourage the Kurds to do what they 
can to protect those fleeing ISIS and provide safe refuge.
  It needs to ensure that, of the resources going to the region, a 
portion be guaranteed to help the Christian community. It needs to have 
the same courage as President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin 
Powell when they said genocide was taking place in Darfur.
  The United Nations has a role too. It should immediately initiate 
proceedings in the International Criminal Court against ISIS for crimes 
against humanity.
  The time to act is now.

                          ____________________