The US declared on Thursday that the Islamic State group’s slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites amounts to a genocide and vowed to halt it.
Secretary of State John Kerry made the proclamation after Congress demanded Washington recognise that the group seeks to exterminate religious minorities.
“Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions, in what it says, what it believes and what it does,” Kerry declared.
“Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups, and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds and other minorities,” he added.
The IS group has regularly carried out mass killings of Shiite Muslims, Christians and Yazidis. In June 2014 it seized the formerly cosmopolitan city of Mosul in northern Iraq, placing whole communities under threat of murder, rape or enslavement. Already in March last year, UN investigators warned the self-proclaimed caliphate was trying to wipe out Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic religious minority.
While genocide is a crime under international law, US officials say Kerry’s ruling does not put Washington under any more legal obligation to act.
Instead, they argue, the US is already doing its utmost to halt the slaughter by leading a 66-nation coalition to “degrade and destroy” the group.