Islamic State's Persecution Of Christians Is A 'Crime Against Humanity': Human Rights Lawyer

[hrmjustin]

By Kirsten Powers

(RNS) Iraq’s Christians are begging the world for help. Is anybody listening?

Since capturing the country’s second largest city of Mosul in early June, the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, has ordered Christians to convert to Islam, pay taxes levied on non-Muslims, or die. The extremist Sunni group is also persecuting and murdering Turkmen and Shabaks, both Muslim religious minorities.

Human rights lawyer Nina Shea described the horror in Mosul to me: “(The Islamic State) took the Christians’ houses, took the cars they were driving to leave. They took all their money. One old woman had her life savings of $40,000, and she said, ‘Can I please have 100 dollars?’, and they said no. They took wedding rings off fingers, chopping off fingers if they couldn’t get the ring off.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/islamic-state-christian-persecution_n_5634967.html?utm_hp_ref=religion


Not my favorite aiuthor but worth reading.

[eissa]

1. Judging by the responses, no,

no one is listening. I took part in a march in San Francisco this past weekend, part of an international campaign to draw awareness to the atrocities by ISIS targeting the Assyrian/Chaldean Christian population of northern Iraq. There were approximately 1,500 people who marched from Embarcadero to Union Square (a 6-mile loop.) I've been trying to find any coverage of that event in local or national news (the organizers contacted both.) Nothing. The media blackout has been baffling. I get that Gaza is the main attraction these days, but there other atrocities being committed in the region and the victims deserve just as much attention.

[hrmjustin]

2. Unfortunately people feel there is nothing we can do except take in refugees.

[okasha]

3. The UN needs to step in there and in Gaza.

[