[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 6 (Tuesday, January 10, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E40]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     INTRODUCING THE IRAQ AND SYRIA GENOCIDE EMERGENCY RELIEF AND 
                       ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2017

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 10, 2017

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise to announce that my 
friend Anna Eshoo and I today introduced the Iraq and Syria Genocide 
Emergency Relief and Accountability Act of 2017 (H.R. 390).
   H.R. 390 would require the State Department and U.S. Agency for 
International Development to identify the urgent humanitarian needs of 
Christians and other genocide survivors from religious minority 
communities and to start supporting some of the entities effectively 
aiding them on-the-ground.
   This bill is urgently needed because Christian survivors of the ISIS 
genocide are facing an emergency. Just before Christmas, I went to 
Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to meet with these survivors. 
They told me the United States had abandoned them. I saw first-hand how 
the Obama administration has failed to help them.
   I was in Erbil at the personal invitation of the Chaldean Catholic 
Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar Warda. More than 70,000 Christians--10,500 
families--who escaped from ISIS have relied on the Archdiocese of Erbil 
for food, shelter, and medical care to survive. Yet the Obama 
administration and United Nations have refused to give a single dollar 
to the Archdiocese to help them. They have been kept alive only because 
of the generosity of organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Aid 
to the Church in Need. However, the needs are so great that the 
Archdiocese is chronically in crisis mode, unsure whether it will soon 
run out of resources to sustain these Christians.
   The winter temperatures are freezing and the risk of related illness 
is high. Iraq's Christian population is less than 250,000, down from up 
to 1.4 million in 2002, down from 500,000 in 2013 just before ISIS 
began targeting Christians for genocide.
   Having fled ISIS, these Christians may have to flee their homelands. 
Perhaps they will take the little money they have left, and pay 
smugglers to get them to Europe. They would risk becoming prisoners of 
human traffickers or perishing in the Mediterranean Sea, where more 
than 5,000 refugees and migrants died or went missing in 2016.
   For a few of these genocide survivors unable to return home, the 
only long-term option may be resettlement in a country like the United 
States as a refugee. Our legislation would create a Priority Two 
designation that they are of ``special humanitarian concern'' to the 
United States. The P-2 designation would ensure that they are able to 
get an overseas interview with the U.S. government to be considered for 
the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program without needing a referral from the 
United Nations, an NGO, or another U.S. government entity. This would 
not guarantee acceptance and admission and they would have to clear the 
same security screening as every other Iraqi and Syrian refugee before 
being admitted. But at least they will be considered.
  The other key element of our bill focuses on accountability. It would 
require the U.S. government to identify and support some entities that 
are conducting criminal investigations, and collecting evidence, on 
perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in 
Iraq and Syria. This evidence is usable in future criminal trials. 
Until now, the State Department has been considering these crimes 
merely as human rights violations, rather than as crimes.
  Archbishop Warda has put it clearly. ``These coming months may well 
decide the fate of Christianity in Iraq: whether it survives and is 
given a chance for rebirth; or whether it perishes, existing only as a 
few scattered museum pieces with caretaker clergy, of interest to 
tourists and academics perhaps, but without the Christian people who 
had lived there for two-thousand years.''
  As the Syriac Archbishop of Mosul, who had to seek refuge in Erbil 
from ISIS together with his people, told me during my mission, ``We 
pray that President Trump will help us. We are the last people to speak 
the Aramaic language. Without help, we are finished.''
  Archbishop Nicodemus had reason to be hopeful. On September 9, 2016, 
at the Voter Values Summit, then-candidate Trump said, ``ISIS is 
hunting down and exterminating what it calls the Nation of the Cross. 
ISIS is carrying out a genocide against Christians in the Middle East. 
We cannot let this evil continue.''
  If our legislation moves quickly onto the floor for a vote and to 
President Trump for his signature, I am confident that he will sign it 
and ensure that it is fully implemented. The Christians of the Middle 
East are counting on us.
  Many groups support H.R. 390, including the Knights of Columbus, 
Family Research Council, In Defense of Christians, 21st Century 
Wilberforce Initiative, Commission for International Justice and 
Accountability, HIAS, Aid the Church in Need USA, Open Doors, A Demand 
for Action, Yezidi Human Rights Organization International, Religious 
Freedom Institute, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and Syrian 
Accountability Project, and Civitas Maxima.
  It is also supported by all the former U.S. Ambassadors-at Large for 
War Crimes, David Scheffer (1997 through 2001), Pierre Prosper (2001 
through 2005), Clint Williamson (2006 through 2009), and Stephen Rapp 
(2009 through 2015), as well as the Founding Chief Prosecutor of the 
Special Court for Sierra Leone, David Crane, the Director of the Center 
for Religious Freedom Nina Shea, and the author of Defying ISIS, Rev. 
Johnnie Moore.
  Fifteen of our colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, are original 
cosponsors of H.R. 390. I call on my other colleagues to cosponsor this 
bill and help ensure that it gets to the new President as soon as 
possible so that Christian genocide survivors in Iraq and elsewhere get 
the help they so desperately need.

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