Religious freedom commission: US should do more to assist religious minorities in Iraq
June 09, 2015
Recalling the first anniversary of the fall of Iraq’s second-largest city to forces of the Islamic State, a federal government commission has urged the United States to do more to protect Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.
“Throughout northern Iraq, ISIL has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, murdered dissenting Sunni clerics, kidnapped Christian priests and nuns, abducted Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves, and destroyed Sunni houses and businesses, Shi’a shrines and Christian churches,” the commission’s chairman said in a statement.
“USCIRF calls on the U.S. government to raise its annual refugee resettlement ceiling from 70,000 to at least 100,000,” the commission added. “USCIRF also recommends that the U.S. government call for or support referral by the U.N. Security Council to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate ISIL violations in Iraq against religious and ethnic minorities.”
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