Dáil debates

Thursday, 13 April 2017

Topical Issue Debate

Christian Community in the Middle East

5:10 pm

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. Ar an chéad dul síos ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Cheann Comhairle as an motion inniu.

I thank the Acting Chairman for the opportunity to speak and I thank the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, for being here. I know he is very busy. I thank him for his engagement with myself and Deputies Grealish, O'Keeffe and Michael Collins on this issue. We have had a number of meetings but we will need a follow-up meeting after Easter.

Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria will be exterminated or forced to migrate, solely on the basis of their religion, by Islamic State - also known as ISIS or Daesh - and other militant extremists. Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria have been an integral part of the region's cultural fabric for millennia. Since 2003, minority groups in Iraq and Syria have been the target of systematic violence, with millions fleeing their ancestral homes. Christians and members of other religious minorities - I stress other minorities, including minority Muslim groups - in Iraq and Syria have been murdered, subjugated and have suffered grievous bodily and psychological harm, including sexual enslavement and abuse inflicted in a deliberate and calculated manner in violation of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. These atrocities were undertaken with the specific intent of bringing about the eradication and displacement of their communities and the destruction of their cultural heritage in violation of that convention.

Genocide is a crime under international law that shall be punished, whether committed by "constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals" as provided by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article I of the convention, signed at Paris on 9 December 1948 - all that long ago - states that "the Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish." Article II states:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and

(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III affirms that the following acts shall be punishable:

(a) genocide;

(b) conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) attempt to commit genocide;

(e) complicity in genocide

On 13 March, 2015 the United Nations Committee on Human Rights reported that ethnic and religious groups targeted by Islamic State include Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen, Sabian Mandaeans, Kakais, Kurds and Shias and that it is reasonable to conclude that some of the incidents in Iraq in 2014-2015 may constitute genocide. I appeal to the Minister to do something. This is happening right under our noses. Like my colleagues, I salute the Government and the Minister for Defence for sending in the rescue ships of our proud Naval Service. The number of people they have plucked from the water and saved is astonishing. Sadly, many have also drowned.

I travelled to Lebanon with Deputy Grealish and Senator Rónán Mullen and I visited the camps. I will quote from one poor woman I met in a camp at 10 o'clock one Sunday night. She recalled the harrowing story of her family, which was turned upside down in the blink of an eye when their home town in Syria was overrun by Islamic State forces. The family I met living in this camp is a retired couple. He is 82 and his wife is 73. She was crying as told me what happened to them and their 40 year old daughter who has two children. They were a regular Catholic family living an ordinary regular life in their home in Syria. When ISIS came to town, all the Christian houses were, unfortunately, marked with a cross, which is so sad. Then the knock came on the door in the morning and they were told by ISIS they had to convert to Islam within a week, leave within half an hour or be shot on the spot. When the ISIS soldiers returned, the daughter's husband refused to leave. Who would blame him? He was executed on the spot in front of the family - shot dead for refusing to agree to their terms to leave or convert to Islam. The family then agreed to leave. They had to leave their house with the clothes on their backs. Isis took over their house, car and all their property. They had to walk in excess of 200 km to the Syria-Lebanon border, where they now live in a refugee camp a few miles from that border.

That family is typical of huge numbers of Christians driven from their homes in Syria and Iraq by ISIS. They were a self-sufficient family, working and carrying out their ordinary lives in their home country. The man who was executed had a well-paid job on an oil rig. The mother is a retired nurse and the father had worked with the local authority. They are not economic migrants. They are fleeing the most awful persecution and terror of their lives. They do not want to stay in an Army barracks in Mullingar or any other country to which they might be sent, particularly in light of language barriers and everything else. It was so sad. We met the children. The poor little children came out to meet us and had a little cáca milis, a welcoming party for us in the dark and they did a special dance for us. To see in that camp only grannies, very old people and children under ten or 11, no sign of the men and no sign of the mothers.

Christianity has been a stabilising factor in the Middle East since the first Easter but now it is being undermined and driven out. It is going to be a less safe place and the world itself will be a most dangerous place. His Holiness - we met him, as Deputy O'Keeffe said - pleaded with us to go back to our parliaments. Some parliaments, such as the United States Congress and the Parliament in the UK, have passed motions in this regard. I await the Minister's response.

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