You can add to that Hamas’ and Fatah’s treatment of their own people.
ISIS persecution of minorities at UN Security Council Patriarch Sako at debate chaired by French FM Fabius
(by Fausto Gasparroni) (ANSAmed) – ROME – The issue of persecution of Christians in the Middle East will be addressed at a UN Security Council meeting on Friday in New York. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius will be chairing an ‘open debate’ at the ministerial level on the situation of ethnic and religious minorities under attack in the region in turmoil. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will be speaking and a video-conference from Geneva will be held with High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein. The Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, Monsignor Louis Raphael I Sako, and Vian Dakhil, the Iraqi parliamentarian of the Yezidi minority who in August drew the world’s attention to the horrors of an attack suffered by her community by the Islamic State (ISIS) in northern Iraq, will be present.
This is the first time that the UN Security Council will be devoting a debate to the persecution of minorities currently under attack from jihadists. France, which holds the alternating presidency, chose to focus on the issue after reports of widespread and systematic human rights violations by ISIS, such as the attack on the Yezidis that has been called a ‘genocide’, as well as the killings of Kurds, the hostage-taking of hundreds of Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in northeastern Syria and the decapitation of 21 men (including 20 Coptic Christians) in Libya. The deliberate destruction of religious sanctuaries and archaeological finds as well as illicit trafficking by ISIS to finance terrorism activities also played a part in the reason for the Security Council meeting.