The European parliament has passed a resolution recognising the Islamic State’s (IS) massacres of religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis, as genocide.
The resolution was passed at a plenary session in Strasbourg, calling for the actors to be brought to justice for violating the international law and committing crimes against humanity.
Swedish MEP Lars Adaktusson had tabled the resolution, calling it a “historic Decision”.
Adaktusson told Newsweek, “It gives the victims of the atrocities a chance to get their human dignity restored. It’s also a historical confirmation that the European Parliament recognized what is going on and that they are suffering from the most despicable crime in the world, namely genocide.”
Earlier in January, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South suggested a House of Commons motion calling the parliament to recognise IS’ systematic violence and murder against Christians and other minorities in Syria and Iraq as genocide. The motion notes that “this disgusting behaviour clearly falls within the definition of genocide as determined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide”.
After crossing the border into Iraq and seizing the country’s second largest city of Mosul in mid-2014, IS insurgents killed hundreds of civilians and captured thousands more. Religious minorities faced the worst atrocities at the hands of IS.
Nearly 5,000 Yazidi women were captured and taken into sex slavery by the extremist group.
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