Germany’s lower house has recognized as “genocide” the 2014 massacre by the armed group ISIL (ISIS) against the Yazidi minority group in Iraq and Syria.
After seizing large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, ISIL killed more than 1,200 Yazidis, enslaved 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, and displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from their homes in northern Iraq.
Green party lawmaker Max Lucks said Germany was home to what is believed to be the world’s largest Yazidi diaspora of about 150,000 people, meaning the country had a particular responsibility to the community. “Their pain will never go away,” he told the Bundestag. “We owe this to the Yazidis because we did not take action [in 2014] when we were needed. Our silence cost lives.”
The resolution said the chamber “recognizes the crimes against the Yazidi community as genocide, following the legal evaluations of investigators from the United Nations.”
Read more here.
