Hillary Clinton has put her weight behind a campaign to recognise the persecution of Iraqi and Syrian Christians by Islamist extremists as genocide.
The US Democrat presidential candidate told a meeting in New Hampshire that she believed there was “enough evidence” to prove that the scale of violence committed against religious minorities by ISIS terrorists constituted a campaign of genocide.
Her remarks were hailed as a breakthrough by a group of 75 British MPs and peers who earlier this month signed a letter to David Cameron asking him to declare the crimes of ISIS as genocide.
“That the US Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, has now gone on public record that there is ‘now enough evidence’ that the killings by ISIS constitute genocide is a huge boost to our campaign,” said Lord Alton of Liverpool and Robert Flello, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, in a joint statement on behalf of the signatories.
“As former US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton knows the Middle East well and her backing for our position sends a very clear signal to the United Nations that it should determine that genocide is indeed being perpetrated,” they said.
“This will require the now 147 signatories to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide to act to end this persecution and to ensure that in due course its perpetrators are caught, tried and punished for their evil crimes.”
The declaration by Mrs Clinton represents a U-turn because she was previously reluctant to use the word “genocide” to describe the ISIS campaign against Christians, Yazidis, non-Sunni Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities.
She announced her change of heart when a voter asked her last week: “Will you join those leaders, faith leaders and secular leaders and political leaders from both the right and the left, in calling what is happening by its proper name, genocide?”
“I will because we now have enough evidence,” replied Mrs Clinton.
She added that she was convinced the violence was “deliberately aimed at destroying not only the lives but wiping out the existence of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East”.
In Britain, the Prime Minister earlier this month came under similar pressure when MPs and peers presented him with a letter telling him there was sufficient proof of the systematic persecution of minorities that was aimed at their annihilation.
They urged Mr Cameron to recognise the slaughter as genocide in an attempt to persuade those countries that have signed up to the Convention of their duty to halt the killings and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“There is now clear evidence that this genocide includes assassinations of Church leaders, mass murders, torture, kidnapping for ransom in the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria, sexual enslavement and systematic rape of Christian girls and women, forcible conversions to Islam, destruction of churches, monasteries, cemeteries and Christian artefacts, and theft of lands and wealth from Christian clergy and laity alike,” the letter said.
Many parishes in the north of England have been badly affected by floods over the Christmas period. The Church of Holy Trinity and St George in Kendal narrowly escaped flooding.
The River Kent broke its banks and water reached the steps of the building. Like many other churches, it is appealing to its parishioners for funds to help flood victims.
Carlisle has been severely hit by floods. Fr John Miller, curate of Our Lady and St Joseph’s Church, said: “Ten years ago the same thing happened, so for many of our parishioners this is the second time.” He added that the parish, which has a lot of elderly parishioners, had been very badly affected.
“People have been very generous with donations,” he said. “The St Vincent de Paul Society have been superb in helping.” The church itself escaped flooding, but the Newman Catholic School was badly flooded, and has had to relocate to other premises.
Fr Richard Duffield, parish priest of St Wilfrid’s church, York, told Vatican Radio that a number of his parishioners had been evacuated from their homes “and for them the situation has been very distressing, especially the anxiety as the floods rose, not knowing how high they would rise”.
A quarter of the city was under water, he said, but people were “pulling together” to help one another.
Asked if more money could have been spent Fr Duffield said: “There were some cuts in the last couple of years, and people feel that if the cuts had not been made then the defences would have worked better than they did. Money was not spent on maintaining an essential flood barrier on one of the two rivers in York which has been the cause of this latest flooding.”
Bishops from around the world are due to visit Christian communities in Gaza and Bethlehem and refugees in Jordan as part of the annual meeting of the Holy Land Coordination. In Bethlehem, the group, led by Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton, will visit the Christian community in Beit Jala, which lost land following the annexation of its property and the building of a separation wall in the Cremisan Valley.
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