UK Recognizes ISIS's Genocide Actions Against Yazidis

AFP

Four Yazidis with photographs of their family members

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the British Foreign Office declared today, Tuesday, in a statement that the government views ISIS' treatment of Yazidis in Iraq in 2014 as "genocide."

"The UK has today formally acknowledged that acts of genocide were committed against the Yazidi people by Daesh (Islamic State, ISIS) in 2014," stated the UK foreign office.

According to the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the announcement coincides with the ninth anniversary of the "atrocities" ISIS committed against the Yazidi Kurds in Iraq.

The Holocaust and the genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Cambodia are the only four previous genocides that the UK has acknowledged to date.

From 2014 to 2015, ISIS terrorists dominated the Sinjar (Shingal) district, the Yazidis' traditional home, and perpetrated atrocities against the Yazidis, a religious minority that ISIS specifically targeted. These atrocities included mass executions, forced marriages, sexual assault, and enslavement.

According to a statement by the UK's minister for the Middle East, Tariq Ahmad, "the Yazidi population suffered greatly at the hands of Daesh nine years ago, and the effects are still being felt today."

The British government had previously denounced ISIS's crimes against the Yazidis, but those denunciations did not go as far as to label those crimes as genocide.

In January of last year, the German Parliament (Bundestag) recognized the atrocities committed by the terrorist organization ISIS against the Yazidis in Iraq as genocide and proposed several aid measures.

According to the Yazidi Affairs Office of the Kurdistan Regional Government to Rescue the Kidnapped Yazidis, more than 6,000 Yazidis were abducted when ISIS stormed their Nineveh Governorate stronghold, and more than 2,000 of these individuals are still missing.

The office reports that more than 120,000 Yazidis have fled Iraq since ISIS began its attacks, and thousands of those who remain reside in camps.



PUKMEDIA