Germany’s lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a resolution recognizing as genocide the killing of Yazidis by the jihadist group Islamic State following its lightning offensive in northern Iraq and the creation of its ‘caliphate’.
The resolution denounces «war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Islamic State» and states that those committed against the Yazidis «constitute genocide,» according to a statement published on the Bundestag website.
It also calls on the government to maintain its support for national and international structures to take legal action against those responsible for these killings, including trials against jihadists detained in Germany.
The document also calls on the authorities to speak out in favor of Iraq’s ratification of the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC), and advocates the inclusion of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the Iraqi Penal Code.
Islamic State stormed into Yazidi-majority areas as part of its blitzkrieg offensive in northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, killing thousands of people and enslaving thousands of women and girls from this community. At the time of the jihadist invasion, some 550,000 Yazidis were living in Iraq. Of these, some 360,000 Yazidis escaped and found refuge elsewhere.
The Yazidis practice an ancient form of religion that combines elements of Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions and have their main holy city in Lalish in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. This has earned them the label of «heretics» from the Islamic State, a Sunni fundamentalist organization.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
