Keeping the distinction between Islam and terrorism clear could prevent an ultimate ‘clash of civilisations’, an EU diplomat says.
“All this hatred and bloodshed is a misuse of religion,” said Ján Figeľ, the European Commission’s first special envoy for the promotion of freedom of religion or belief outside the EU. Failure to separate fanatics from the religion they claim could even spark World War III, the Slovakian MP said on 26 November in Vienna at an event organised by religious freedom organisation ADF International.
The UN has broken the pledges it made in the aftermath of World War II to prevent genocide from recurring, said Ewelina Ochab. PICTURE: World Watch Monitor
FAILURE TO BRING IS TO JUSTICE SHOWS UN GENOCIDE CONVENTIONS ‘OBSOLETE’
The UN must urgently put in place measures to hold to account jihadists who have committed atrocities against minorities in Iraq and Syria, because existing conventions have become “obsolete”, the author of a book documenting recent violence against them has said.
Vienna-based legal counsel Ewelina Ochab, who authored Never Again: Legal Responses To A Broken Promise In The Middle East, accused the UN of breaking the pledges it made in the aftermath of World War II to prevent genocide from recurring.
Speaking at the book’s launch at the UN’s Palais des Nations in Geneva on 24th November, she argued that the conventions on genocide prevention had become “obsolete” because measures had not been taken to bring to justice members of the Islamic State (IS), whose attacks on Christians and other religious minorities amounted to “genocide”.
Ms Ochab said the legal process against IS members could be carried out in one of three ways: by trying suspected perpetrators at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, by trying them at an “ad hoc” International Criminal Court set up specifically to deal with atrocities in Iraq and Syria, or by setting up a UN-backed court in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East. In the first two scenarios, she said national courts in Iraq and Syria should support the ICC’s work to prosecute all accomplices.
To introduce her work, Ms Ochab held up a piece of a cross that she picked up in a destroyed church in the formerly IS-held town of Qaraqosh in northern Iraq, as well as a few pages of a Bible. Ms Ochab’s book draws on testimonies collected by the Vienna-based charity ADF International. Never Again includes eyewitness accounts of IS atrocities, the international community’s response to recent genocides, and analysis of existing genocide legislation. She argues that the current legal safeguards have failed to protect vulnerable communities from ethnic, cultural, and religious destruction.
According to the last census before the US-led invasion of 2003, there were as many as 1.4 million Christians in Iraq. Ms Ochab noted that today there are thought to be fewer than 250,000. Many factors are behind the exodus of Christians from Iraq, which the chaotic aftermath of the invasion accelerated. The rise of IS in 2014 drove many of the country’s remaining Christians to abandon their homeland. Those who remained, along with Yezidis, who were not given the option to flee, have told of atrocities and soldiers liberating IS-held towns and villages around Mosul have found many churches burnt out and badly vandalised.
A spokesman for the charity said: “We published this book to demonstrate clearly that the Christians of the Middle East are living through a genocide and so that the UN Security Council recognises that and fights the impunity of Daesh [IS] members.”
Only the United States, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and Britain’s House of Commons have recognised the atrocities by IS against Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq such as Yezidis as genocide. Canada has recognised a genocide of Yezidis.
Meanwhile, in Australia on Monday night, a motion was introduced into Federal Parliament to recognise IS actions against minority groups as genocide.
The motion, which was introduced by MPs Chris Hayes and Kevin Andrews, was welcomed by the Australian Christian Lobby which is seeking to build public support through a ‘Stop the Genocide’ petition. More than 15,500 people have already signed the petition.
– GABRIELLE DESARZENS, World Watch Monitor (with DAVID ADAMS)
Mr Figeľ, who has been in the role since May, highlighted the words of an Iraqi Christian soldier returning to a church in the recently liberated city of Qaraqosh: “No religion would do that,” the soldier said, pointing to the badly vandalised church. “They’re terrorists.”
“I applaud this distinction,” Mr Figeľ said, adding that Christianity has been misused to achieve violence aims in the past. “Don’t mix [up] criminals and the religion they misuse,” he added.
Other speakers at the event, ‘Embattled: Christians under pressure in Europe and beyond’, included Swedish MEP Lars Adaktusson and Hungarian MP Tamás Török, Under Secretary of State for Hungary’s new office focusing on the persecution of Christians.
Mr Adaktusson said that although “there is a very clear connection” between organisations such as the Islamic State and Islam, “we need to be very careful not to blame individual Muslims for terrorist attacks”.
Meanwhile, he outlined his support for an autonomous Nineveh Plain in Iraq to encourage displaced Christians to return home and warned that a Middle East without a “mosaic” of people from different faith backgrounds would be a region “rapidly returning to the Dark Ages”.
Hungary’s Mr Török said European nations have a “precious obligation” to preserve their Christian values for future generations, saying he hoped “Hungary will have an important role to play”.
ADF International’s Andreas Thonhauser stressed the importance of bringing perpetrators of religiously motivated violence to justice.
He said displaced Christians are “desperate” for justice and quoted an Iraqi refugee living in a camp in Amman, Jordan, who told him: “Make sure that those who murdered our families, those who tortured and brutalised our friends, torched our churches, drove us out of our homelands; make sure once Daesh [IS] are defeated, these people are not allowed just to shave off their beards and get on with their lives.”
Mr Thonhauser said there is “great reluctance” in Western media to think of Christians – whom he said are “seen as aggressors” – as victims.
His colleague, Ewelina Ochab, added that the media needs to get to grips with the actions of the world’s fourth deadliest militant group – Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria. She praised the International Criminal Court for declaring Boko Haram’s actions “crimes against humanity” but said the herdsmen are in danger of being “forgotten” as they continue to carry out atrocities with impunity.
Mr Figeľ emphasised the importance of religious literacy, noting that 84 per cent of the world’s population – “the overwhelming majority” – still declare some kind of religious affiliation. He said “Christianity is the most persecuted religious community worldwide” and that there is a “genocide” of Christians taking place in the Middle East. However, he concluded: “If humanity, justice and solidarity prevail over fear, indifference and ignorance, centuries of genocide may belong to history and not the future.”
Austrian politician Gudrun Kugler said she recognised the difficulty of focusing on Europe when much greater atrocities are happening elsewhere, but quoted the late Pope John Paul II as saying: “We must not overlook more subtle forms of persecution…that start with social exclusion and lead to social death.”
ADF International’s Paul Coleman said there is a “rising tide of restrictions” across Europe, regulating what people can say, how they can act, how they can raise their children and what they can teach in their churches.
He said Europe’s hate-speech laws are the equivalent of blasphemy laws elsewhere and warned that the position of FoRB in Europe is “fragile”.
Ellen Kryger Fantini, from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, cited the example of French priest Jacques Hamel, knifed to death as he led mass. She concluded: “If we don’t take [the threat to FoRB in Europe] seriously, it can lead to worse and, in fact, we’ve already seen it lead to worse.”
