Following the United States’ declaration that the Islamic State is committing genocide in Iraq and Syria, the New York Times said the evidence against the militant group was “indisputable”.
“Since the Holocaust, the United States has designated wide-scale killing as genocide only four times: Cambodia in 1989, Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994 and Sudan in 2004,” said the New York Times in an editorial.
“To those it has now added the Islamic State’s rampage in Iraq and Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Thursday.”
Noting that “the term genocide, first specified in the 1948 United Nations Convention, refers to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”,” the paper said “the evidence against the Islamic State is indisputable”.
Highlighting the use of “rape as an act of war” the New York Times said the declaration “should make Congress more willing to allow Syrian refugees who are the survivors of this genocide to find safe harbor in the United States”.
See the full text of the editorial here.