U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Thursday officially declared that the Islamic State terror group has carried out “genocide” against Christians and other religious and ethnic minority groups under its control, including Yazidis and Shiite Muslims.
The declaration, which Mr. Kerry made at a news briefing Thursday morning, came a day after State Department officials said he was likely to miss a March 17 deadline set by Congress for deciding whether atrocities carried out by the terror group were in fact a “genocide.”
“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control” Mr. Kerry told reporters at State Department headquarters, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
“Naming these crimes is important, but what is essential is to stop them,” he said, outlining a litany of atrocities that the militants have committed against people and religious sites, as well as threats.
“Daesh is genocidal by self-acclimation, by ideology and by practice,” Mr. Kerry said.
The development marks the first time U.S. officials have officially declared a genocide since 2004, when the George W. Bush administration used the term to describe the killing in Sudan’s Darfur region.
U.S. administrations have long been reluctant to adopt the tag, which can bring with it formal obligations under international law and, in some cases, can make a negotiated settlement to an international crisis harder to achieve.
It was not immediately clear whether Thursday’s declaration will be followed by any specific legal action.
Saying he is “neither judge nor prosecutor nor jury,” Mr. Kerry told reporters that any potential criminal charges against the extremists must result from an independent international investigation.
However, he added the U.S. would continue to support efforts to collect evidence and document atrocities.
The secretary of state’s comments are likely to please pro-Christian groups, who lobbied lawmakers to include a provision in the omnibus spending bill passed late last year mandating the State Department to make a determination.
In addition, the House on Monday approved on a 393-0 vote a resolution declaring the atrocities targeting Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East constitute a genocide.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, California Republican praised Thursday’s developments.
“Secretary Kerry is finally making the right call,” Mr. Royce said in a statement. “Christian and Yezidi [sic] communities are deliberately targeted for elimination in ISIS’s self-declared caliphate.”
“President Obama should step up and lay out the broad, overarching plan that’s needed to actually defeat and destroy ISIS,” Mr. Royce added. “This administration’s long pattern of paralysis and ineffectiveness in combating these radical Islamist terrorists is unacceptable.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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