The Knights of Columbus has issued a 280-page report declaring that the Islamic State group is committing “genocide” against Christians and other religious groups in the Middle East and urging the U.S. State Department to use that term to describe its actions.
Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson said his Catholic fraternal organization, working in partnership with the group In Defense of Christians, does not contend Christians alone are facing genocide from the group known as ISIS but it believes the State Department must include them.
“The United States government should not exclude Christians from such a finding,” he said at a news conference March 10.
“Doing so simply would be contrary to the facts.”
At the request of senior State Department officials, the Knights of Columbus issued the report detailing how Christians have been the victims of killings, kidnappings, rapes, and destruction of religious property. It included a list of 1,131 Christians killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014, and 125 churches attacked there in the same period.
Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, joined Anderson on a panel of experts supporting the findings of the report and the use of the word “genocide.”
“The truth is, the word’s moral force is the reason for this word to be used,” said Stanton, the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Nina Shea, a religious freedom expert at the Hudson Institute, called the report the “largest compilation in existence of what has happened to Christians in the path of ISIS.”
In response to a question from RNS, a State Department official, who was not authorized to be identified by name, said, “Regardless of whether Da’esh’s conduct satisfies certain legal definitions, including genocide and crimes against humanity, the United States has been clear that our interest in accountability for perpetrators remains undiminished.”
Adelle M. Banks is production editor and a national correspondent at RNS.
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