“There Is No Humanity”: The Genocidal Crimes of ISIS
When I was a child, the stories my grandmother told me were of the Holocaust. They horrified me.
When I traveled to northern Iraq in September 2015 on behalf of the Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, I once again heard horrifying stories. I made this “Bearing Witness” trip to gather firsthand testimony about victims’ experiences — the accounts we needed to determine the nature of the crimes that had occurred.
For two weeks I visited tents, makeshift shelters, and houses, speaking to Iraqis who had fled as the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorized and cleansed Ninewa province in northern Iraq of its religious minorities a year prior. More than 800,000 Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, Kakai, and Sabaean-Mandaeans now live in displaced persons camps and other temporary dwellings in Iraqi Kurdistan.
ISIS targeted these populations on the basis of their group identity, committing mass atrocities to control, expel, and exterminate ethnic and religious minorities in areas it seized. The violence could have been prevented. The failure of local governments and the international community to protect these people leaves us to document their suffering and sound the alarm about the risks that remain.
From Terrorism to Genocide
Yezidis, who practice a more than 5,000-year-old polytheistic religion, found their very existence threatened as ISIS — whose ideology calls for their destruction — conquered territory in northern Iraq’s Ninewa province. Yezidi survivors told me about their family members who were killed, kidnapped, held as sex slaves, or who were missing.
While I spoke with one father, his seven-year-old son clung to his leg. The child had only recently escaped captivity. The man’s young daughter was still being held by ISIS; and his wife also had been kidnapped. I had hoped not to hear such accounts, which revealed the intentional targeting of a people for elimination on the basis of their identity — accounts of genocide.
More than 70 years after the horrors of the Holocaust, genocide is a persistent threat to communities around the world. To say that means that we as an international community are failing to prevent, and are failing to protect.
The consequences of that failure are all too real. Elias, a Yezidi who survived a massacre of hundreds of men, wrote for me the names of more than 50 missing family members, including his wife, mother, and each of his sons, save for one. As I spoke to Elias, I thought of my own grandfather, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust. That knowledge of his experience, and his silence about it, affected me deeply and compelled me to work as a human rights lawyer. It is why I came to work at the Museum — to ensure that others do not experience the horrors that he and the Jews of Europe endured. Yet there, before me, was another man who feared he had lost almost everyone.
A Voice for the Voiceless
The work of the Museum to shine light on crimes perpetrated against Elias and other minorities in Iraq is critical.
We were the first independent organization to document that genocide was perpetrated in Iraq. The accounts of victims also point to both the early warning signs of mass atrocities that were missed and the future risks that these and other communities face.
By publishing a report of our findings, we are striving to do what was not done for the Jews of Europe: to be a voice for the all-too-often voiceless populations at risk of genocide and related atrocities today. Through the work of the Simon-Skjodt Center, we call for action to prevent these crimes and protect vulnerable populations. That is why my colleagues also have recently traveled to Burma, the Turkish-Syria and Jordan-Syria borders, and Central African Republic to interview those suffering from group-targeted violence.
Genocide — defined by the United Nations as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group — is a rare event. Intent is hard to prove and it is normally left to courts of law to determine whether a genocide has been perpetrated. But in those instances where we see that genocide is imminent, occurring, or ongoing, we must call for protective action to halt atrocities, draw attention to the suffering, and lend our support to survivors seeking justice and recognition of their experiences. Working with a group of top legal experts and practitioners, we analyzed the information gathered in Iraq and determined that there were substantial grounds to believe that genocide had occurred.
The Museum’s report has helped prompt internal assessments by the US government and the United Nations over the nature of the crimes perpetrated and the ongoing risks facing civilians. On March 17, the US government announced its determination that ISIS had committed genocide against groups — including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims — in areas under its control. This is an essential first step in what must be a broader effort to investigate the full extent of the crimes committed against all populations, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to protect remaining at-risk populations.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been the victims of ISIS crimes. We hope their stories compel governments to recognize the crimes they experienced as genocide and crimes against humanity and take steps to hold the perpetrators accountable. We also hope our findings highlight the urgency of the ongoing threat posed by ISIS and the continued vulnerability of these minority communities.
Seventy-one years ago my grandfather survived a horror that I, today, struggle to come to terms with. I am humbled by the strength and resilience that he showed in building a new life. Yet I know that in his silence about the past lay the deep pain that he carried with him each day. It grieves me that 71 years later, Elias endures a similar pain, that he also was targeted for extermination on the basis of his identity. It also compels me to continue to work toward a world without such pain.
This is the enduring goal that we at the Simon-Skjodt Center are committed to realizing: A world without genocide, a world where “Never Again” has meaning. It is possible.
Naomi Kikoler is deputy director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the Museum. She was formerly director of policy and advocacy with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.
This article was first published in Spring 2016.
The Declaration of Genocide
On March 17, the US government declared that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has committed genocide and crimes against humanity. In November 2015, the Museum’s report“Our Generation Is Gone”: The Islamic State’s Targeting of Iraqi Minorities in Ninewa, identified numerous grounds for asserting that ISIS perpetrated genocide against the Yezidi and ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity against Christian, Yezidi, Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean Mandaean, and Kakai minority populations:
- The forcible transfer of more than 800,000 men, women, and children from their homes
- The deliberate destruction of mosques, shrines, temples, and churches
- Severe deprivations of physical liberty, rape, sexual slavery, enslavement, and murder, perpetrated in a widespread and systematic manner
- Yezidis systematically targeted for murder on the basis of their identity
- Thousands of women forcibly converted and held captive for sexual slavery
- ISIS sought to prevent the births of Yezidi children and kidnapped scores of children
- Tens of thousands of Yezidis encircled and trapped on Mount Sinjar as ISIS attempted to starve them to death.
The Museum also found that genocide was continuing to be perpetrated against those Yezidi women and children who, a year after ISIS captured their towns, are still being held captive as sex slaves and child soldiers.
This article was first published in Spring 2016.
