Free Republic

Full title: State Department lawyers removing references to ISIS 'genocide' against Christians, other religious minorities The State Department's top lawyers are systematically removing the word "genocide" to describe the Islamic State's mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies. Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump's pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support. These efforts guarantee that Obama-era policies that worked to exclude Iraq's...

The militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group have reportedly burnt at least nineteen Yazidi girls to death after they refused to remain as sex slaves with the terror group, it has been reported According to the local activists, the incident has taken place during the recent days in the city of Mosul in Iraq. Abdullah Al-Malla, a local media activist, has told the Kurdish news agency ARA News, that the girls were burnt alive after they refused to have sex with the fighters of the group. “They were punished for refusing to have sex...

As the Islamic State continues its genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq, human rights activist and lawyer Jacqueline Isaac testified at the United Nations about some of the atrocities, including parents in Syria who were shown a video of their kidnapped daughters being raped and tortured by ISIS, and then given the dismembered body parts of their daughters in plastic bags. Although Isaac, vice president of the humanitarian group Roads of Success, testified on April 28, her remarks – at the United Nations in New York City -- about the atrocities against women captured...

(CNSNews.com) -- During debate in the British House of Commons about the genocidal actions of the Islamic State (or Daesh), two Ministers of Parliament (MPs) recounted the testimony of a Yazidi girl who was kidnapped and raped, whose father and brother were killed in front of her, who witnessed a 9-year-old girl being raped to death, and who saw a 2-year-old boy killed, ground into meat, and then “fed to his mother who did not know what she was eating.”

The Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group burned 19 Yazidi girls alive after they refused to have sex with its fighters, according to reports. The girls were locked in cages before being publicly executed in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, according to the Kurdish ARA news agency. The gruesome spectacle took place in front of hundreds of people, according to local media activist Abdullah al-Malla. "They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants," he told ARA. Mosul is ISIS's de-facto capital in Iraq, and the country's second largest city. ISIS views the Yazidis - members of...

Former Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) said that Congress is considering the creation of an autonomous region in Iraq to protect Christians and Yazidis from persecution by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and criticized the State Department's lack of involvement in the ongoing discussions. "There are discussions and there will be a resolution introduced in the House, I believe, to set up an into-the-plains, basically a protectorate, whereby Christians, Yazidis and other minorities [will be protected]," Wolf said at an event last week at the National Press Club in Washington. However, Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's...

Witold Gadowski Interview about Refugees Anca Cernea translated on September 26, 2015, an interview given by Witold Gadowski, investigative journalist from Poland, to Jakub Jalowiczor from fronda.pl. Gadowski traveled to Syria and Turkey this past summer as a war correspondent to document the “refugees” flooding Europe. Cernea introduced Gadowski as producer of several documentaries on terrorism, organized crime, corruption, and the old communist system. He is an expert, writer, and journalism teacher at the Pontifical University of John Paul II. In his movie, ‘nsha Allah, Blood of the Martyrs’,Gadowski describes the horrors that Yazidis and Christians must endure in Iraq...

In 2014, Sister Hatune Dogan had been rescuing Christian and Yazidi girls from ISIS captivity for eight months, but she was desperate. If only the world could see the harm being done, understand that rescues were possible, people would open their hearts and their wallets, [so she] found an independent British filmmaker, Edward Watts.. In an email dated February 6, 2015, Watts’s producer, Rosie Garthwaite, wrote: "Hatune you will be the lead story in a documentary about women living under IS.” Watts spent nine days in Germany, Turkey, and Iraq with Sister Hatune. She introduced him to Sheikh Khaire, the...

As Europe mourns ISIS's deadly Paris attacks, only now is the scale of another massacre the West could have prevented becoming clear. Sinuni, Iraq: The wild dogs found the bodies first. In February a Kurdish sheep herder discovered the mass grave a few miles from the tiny Iraqi village of Sinuni, 270 miles north of Baghdad. Among the 37 skeletal remains were women and children as young as two. The dogs fed on the dead, scattering their bones. The victims had been captured, herded together and beheaded or shot. The Islamic State group (ISIS) was responsible for the killings, said...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region-As Peshmerga forces entered the town of Shingal (Sinjar) on Friday Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani congratulated the Yezidi people as well as the Peshmerga and coalition forces for the town's liberation from Islamist militants, hailing it as an important achievement for Kurdistan and the civilized world. "I would also like to congratulate the people of Kurdistan in general and in particular the Yezidi Kurds, the Mir of Yezidis, Baba Sheikh and the members of the spiritual council of Yezidis on the liberation of Sinjar," said Prime Minister Barzani in a statement. "I offer my deepest condolences to...

The leader of Iraqi Kurds declared Friday that the Iraqi town of Sinjar has been liberated from ISIS militants. ..."This operation has moved perhaps faster than some may have thought," said CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who is traveling with the troops.

I met Hans Erling Jensen for dinner in Copenhagen this past summer. I knew him by reputation as one of Europe’s extraordinary Free Speech and anti-censorship stalwarts, one of a handful of brave Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Hollanders. As he says, his “closest friends are on Al-Qaeda’s and ISIS’s hit lists.” Once, Jensen, 65, was a businessman. And then—he “saw the light” and began applying his economic savvy to certain political issues. He is a man of action. Once he analyzes a problem, he  “does” something about it. He is funding an orphanage and school in Katmandu and is...

Large-hearted Sikhs have taken their traditional community kitchen to one of the most dangerous places on earth today - Syria. Giving a twist to the concept of langar, a group of Punjabi NRIs has collaborated with locals to provide fresh bread to nearly 14,000 refugees daily in the strife-torn region for several months now. Langar Aid, an extension of UK-based NGO Khalsa Aid, is located in the Pesh Harbour area, about 35km from the Kurdish city of Duhok and 10km from the Syrian border. Almost 70% of the members of Langar Aid are with Punjabi roots, besides some European...

The Obama administration maintains that its principal strategic response to the conflict in Syria is humanitarian, not military, and focused on human rights. In Syria as well as Iraq, the consequences of this policy have been shockingly deficient. The West is only now beginning to wake up to its catastrophic results, as Europe struggles with a mass migration of a magnitude the continent has not experienced since the 1940s. In April, Assad began intensifying the barrel bombing of Aleppo and Damascus’s Sunni neighborhoods while streamlining the passport process. In June, the U.N. was forced, unconscionably, to slash Syrian refugee...

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

A Canadian Jewish businessman has spearheaded efforts to rescue Iraqi Yazidi and Christian girls from slavery after the girls were captured by ISIS troops, using money donated privately by business contacts. The businessman has cited Oskar Schindler, who rescued Jewish children from the holocaust, as his inspiration. Last summer the world looked on in horror as ISIS swept through north Iraq, home to Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, and Yazidis. Hundreds of thousands fled before them, but thousands more starved to death in the desert, or were captured by Islamic forces. Girls in particular were bartered for in the markets, standing...

Isis militants slaughter more than 300 Yazidi captives in northern Iraq after thousands were taken captive from villages Isis militants slaughter more than 300 Yazidi captives in northern Iraq after thousands were taken captive from villages Hundreds of Yazidi prisoners have been killed near Mosul in northern Iraq Yazidi Progress Party condemned the 'heinous criminal acts' by extremists More than 300 Yazidi prisoners have been slaughtered by Islamic State militants near Mosul in Iraq. According to the Yazidi Progress Party, hundreds were murdered by Isis on Friday in the Tal Afar district, although it is not known how they were...

statement from the Yazidi Progress Party said 300 captives were killed on Friday in the Tal Afar district near the city. Iraqi Vice-President Osama al-Nujaifi described the reported deaths as "horrific and barbaric". Thousands of members of the religious minority group were captured last year. It is not clear how they were killed, or why this has happened now, says the BBC's Middle East editor Alan Johnston. Many are reported to have been held in Mosul, the main stronghold of IS after the militants swept through large areas of northern and western Iraq, and eastern Syria in 2014.

About 300 Yazidi captives of Islamic State were executed by the Islamist group west of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul in Iraq on Friday, Iraqi and Yazidi officials said, according to the BBC. According to a statement released by the Yazidi Progress Party, the captives were killed in the Tal Afar district, near Mosul. Iraq's vice president, Osama al-Nujaifi, said the alleged massacre was "horrific and barbaric," BBC reported.

Iraqi Kurd Fighters Take Sinjar Back From ISIS (Photo: Reuters/Azad Lashkari) A convoy of Kurdish peshmerga fighters drive through Arbil after leaving a base in northern Iraq, on their way to the Syrian town of Kobani, October 28, 2014. By Anugrah Kumar December 21, 2014|9:38 am Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have announced that they've taken the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar back from Islamic State militants in a battle months after tens of thousands of minority Yazidis had to flee their homes while others remained trapped after the town's capture by the terrorists.The Kurd soldiers, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, Saturday reached...