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(IBD) Iraqi Christian and Yazidi representatives are urging the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to call for a special HRC session on the plight of their communities at the hand of jihadists.
After the U.S. airstrikes and airdrops to relieve the Islamic State's siege of Mt. Sinjar in Iraq, where the Kurdish-speaking sect known as the Yazidis had fled, President Obama noted on Aug. 14: "The bottom line is that the situation on the mountain has greatly improved and Americans should be very proud of our efforts."
But shortly before the president spoke, according to ABC News, a spokesman for a U.N. relief agency said the situation on Mount Sinjar remained "dire" despite our efforts. Kieran Dwyer, communications chief for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, warned, "The situation on the mountain is not over."
The situation facing Iraqi Christians and the Yazidis, followers of a sect partly influenced by Christianity but borrowing from other religions as well, is certainly not over. Nor is the plight of non-Muslims throughout the Middle East.
Not long after the president spoke, Fox News reported that Islamic State forces slaughtered 80 Yazidis in a northern village.
"(Militants) arrived in vehicles, and they started their killing this afternoon," Fox News says senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it is because of their (Islamic State's) creed: convert or be killed," he added.
Breen Tahseen, an Iraqi diplomat whose father, Prince Tahseen Saeed Bek, is the leader of the Yazidi minority, has made a plea to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to hold a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) on the plight of the Yazidis and Iraqi Christians. He says Islamist militants have killed at least 3,000 Yazidi men and kidnapped some 5,000.
"On behalf of Prince Tahseen and the Yazidi people, we appeal to High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to lead the call for the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold an emergency session in order to focus world attention on the desperate plight of the Yazidi people," read the Aug. 20 statement by Tahseen, as reported by the monitoring group U.N. Watch.
Iraqi Christian and Yazidi representatives gathered at the HRC headquarters in Geneva to hold a meeting on the plight of Iraq's besieged minorities.
In a letter to Pillay, a coalition of human rights groups and parliamentarians from countries such as Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and Estonia also pleaded for such a special session as the one held on Darfur in 2006.
"It is unconscionable for the world's highest human rights body — which is pledged, under UNGA Resolution 60/251 (the U.N. resolution that created the HRC) to prevent human rights violations and respond promptly to human rights emergencies — to continue turning a blind eye to the massacre, abuse and intimidation of Iraqi civilians," the group wrote in the letter.
Whether it be Coptic churches in Egypt, Christian schools in Nigeria or Yazidis in Iraq, non-Muslims are in the cross hairs of Islamists worldwide. The percentage of Christians in the Middle East has been cut in half, down from 10% in 1900 to just 5% as of 2010, according to the Pew Research Center.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, bucking the winds of political correctness and a rising Muslim population, noted during his annual Easter reception at 10 Downing Street that Christianity is now "the most persecuted religion around the world."
"We should stand up against persecution of Christians and other religious groups wherever and wherever we can, and should be unashamed in doing so."
Perhaps our U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, can give Ms. Pillay a nudge.
