An Unspoken Genocide

Syria. A word that has sadly become synonymous with images of war and destruction, as we enter into what is the 6th year of the Syrian Civil War.

The current conflict is more than just a conventional war, with many layers of destruction to sadly contemplate. Syria holds one of the oldest communities of Christians in the world. St Peter is thought to have been born on its borders and Paul, writer of most of the New Testament was converted on the road to Damascus. Yet this community of Christians, along with the Yazidis, are slowly being extinguished as the civil war in both Syria and Iraq rages on. There is a wearied desire for an end to the atrocities that are being committed on a daily basis.

Parts of our society are beginning to term specifically what is happening to the Christians and Yazidis at the hands of ISIS as that word of horror, genocide. Hidden amongst the fact that many Muslims are being killed there is a hidden genocide against Christians and Yazidis. Thousands have been killed for their faith and scores have been known to have been crucified. A particularly horrifying example reported last year, is that of a 12 year old boy who first had his fingers cut off and then was stripped and crucified alongside his father; all for refusing to renounce his faith. It looks increasingly likely that in a few years, when this awful war finally reaches its end and the damage is assessed, that we will look back and say yet again we failed to stop a genocide.

Just like Rwanda, which was just viewed as a civil war until its culmination, there has been a failure of the international community. It is to the shame of us all in the West that we have had a lack of unified, strong leadership in dealing with the crisis. As the former Congressman Frank Wolf said, ‘we are being too slow’. We are making the same mistake, time and time again, easy to do when it’s not our own brothers and sisters who are being murdered all for the sake of warped ideologies and control.

Humanitarian intervention is needed, through a robust mix of aid drops, safe zones and the acceptance of refugees, especially those members of these minority groups. This is paramount! Do we want to look back with regret and sorrow, as we have so often done in the past? Or look back and say with confidence that we left no stone unturned and did what we could to save lives. We hold our memorials and say never again, yet do we actually learn from these past experiences? The evidence suggests not.

The UN Convention on Human Rights defines genocide as ‘acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group’. Join the dots for what it is. When we see thousands of Yazidi and Christian women being used as slaves, churches destroyed and lives wiped out it is obvious that what the convention of human rights states to be genocide, is happening in Syria and Iraq. Right now. But it is being painfully unspoken.