United Nations: ISIS Committed Genocide Against Yazidis

A United Nations research group has stated that the group known as the Islamic State (ISIS) has committed genocide against the Yazidis of Iraq and Syria.

In a report released today, Thursday, June 16 by the commission’s investigation, it stated that ISIS committed “the most heinous crimes” against members of this religious and ethnic minority, including killings, torture, and sexual slavery.

Investigators of the UN independent commission in this report have called on major world powers to make greater efforts to rescue at least 3,200 Yazidis who are held in ISIS captivity.

ISIS, a group of extreme Sunni militant fighters, considers Yazidis to be devil worshippers whose killing, persecution, and enslavement are permissible.

The report warns that ISIS’s goal is “complete destruction” of this group.

In August 2014, ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar mountains in Kurdistan, Iraq, laying siege to this predominantly Yazidi region.

During the first months of their takeover of parts of Iraq, they took thousands of Yazidis into captivity. Many of them were displaced, and reports indicated widespread ISIS violence against Yazidis, including the killing of many of them.

Over the past two years, reports of the discovery of mass graves containing hundreds of Yazidi bodies have been repeatedly published.

Part of the report states that militants of the Islamic State group enslaved hundreds and possibly thousands of Yazidi women and girls, which they considered “spoils of war,” selling them in slave markets or giving them as “gifts” to militants.

Vivit Muntarbhorn, one of the commission members, stated that many who managed to escape ISIS have recounted horrifying accounts of brutal assaults that typically occurred on a daily basis, gang rapes, torture, and severe beatings.

The UN independent investigation commission has also learned that many of these women committed suicide to escape the atrocities befalling them.

According to the report, children under seven years old are taken captive with their mothers and live under the same dire conditions, subject to daily beatings and abuse by their owners.

Boys over 7 years old are forcibly separated from their mothers and transferred to ISIS camps to undergo military training.

Men and boys over 12 years old are separated from women and girls and are killed “with the aim of destroying Yazidi identity” if they do not convert to Islam.