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| Iraq |
| Radicals in Iraq driving large-scale atrocities: UN |
| 2014-09-02 |
| [ARABNEWS] Radical fighters have carried out atrocities on "an unimaginable scale" in months of fighting with Iraqi forces, who have also killed detainees and shelled civilian areas, a UN official said on Monday. There is "strong evidence" Islamic State and allied groups have carried out assassinations, forced conversions, sexual abuse and torture in Iraq, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri said, opening an emergency debate on the conflict in Geneva. Iraq's human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... minister, Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani, told the session that Islamic State murderous Moslems, "oozing with barbarity," threatened his country and the world, but did not immediately respond to allegations against state troops. Islamic State has grabbed large areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria, declaring a cross-border caliphate and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. At least 1,420 people were killed in Iraq in August alone, UN figures showed on Monday. The one-day UN Human Rights Council session, called by Iraq with the support of allies including the United States, is expected to agree to Baghdad's request to send a team of UN experts to investigate crimes committed in the conflict. "The reports we have received reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale," Pansieri told the Council, on its first meeting about the latest surge in violence. She later told Rooters she was referring to Islamic State. Iraqi government forces, police and allied militia had also committed acts that may amount to war crimes, she said. Human Rights Watch ... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge.... said on Monday it had "credible evidence" including photographs that Islamic State forces had used ground-fired cluster munitions in northern Syria -- the first known use of cluster munitions by the murderous Moslems, although the New York-based watchdog says government forces have used them since 2012. Pansieri said she was particularly worried about the persecution of Christians, Yazidis, Shia, Turkmen and other ethnic groups by Islamic State forces that have swept through western and northern Iraq. Such "ethnic and religious cleansing" may amount to crimes against humanity, she said. Children belonging to targeted minorities have been forcibly recruited and positioned on front lines to shield its fighters or made to donate blood, she said. Women are beaten for breaking rules requiring them to be veiled and escorted by men. Iraqi police have also executed detainees in Tal Afar and government-allied militias opened fire on a mosque in Khanaqin district northeast of Baghdad killing 73 men and boys, she said. Iraqi soldiers have shelled towns and carried out ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperityor a really nice place to raise your kids... and Salahuddin, killing and injuring many dozens of civilians, she added. Iraq's minister Al-Sudani told the session Islamic State was threatening the makeup of his country. "The land of ancient Babylon is subjected to threats starting to its very independence, they are attempting to change its demographic and cultural composition," he said in Arabic. The US ambassador to the rights forum, Keith Harper, urged Iraq's Prime Minister designate Haider Al-Abadi to set up a multiethnic government that would investigate all allegations against government forces and "terrorist groups." "The stories that have emerged from ISIL's (Islamic State's) bloody assault on Iraq are the ones of nightmares. Christians and others have been driven from their homes with the threat of 'convert or die'," Harper said. "The Yazidis have been buried alive, beheaded or killed in mass executions," he said |
| Posted by:Fred |