Genocide in the Middle East
Floor Speech
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Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding, and I am grateful for all of your work, Congressman Fortenberry, Congressman Vargas, and Congresswoman Eshoo.
Sometimes people look at this House and think that all we do is fight and disagree. I am not going to talk about you two punching each other to get a little more press, but it is a remarkable night when we all come together and stand together on such an important issue as this, where we all lend our voices to an incredibly important cause.
We spent a lot of time tonight talking about the atrocities, and I am going to join in because we can't say enough all that has happened.
Two million Christians called Iraq home prior to 2013. Fewer than 300,000 reside there today. Many were victims of killing or kidnappings, others forced to leave their homes by radicals, al Qaeda or ISIS.
In Syria, Christians accounted for 10 percent of the population, but today their numbers have declined to less than 1 million. Last summer, ISIS kidnapped nearly 300 Christians in a Syrian village and then later ransomed them back to their families for an average of $100,000 per person.
When ISIS invaded Mosul, Iraq, in 2013, as Mr. Fortenberry mentioned, they tagged Christian homes with an N for Nazarene, and then they gave the occupants a choice: you can convert, you can flee, or you would face death. In July of 2014, ISIS announced that the city, no doubt, was Christian-free--no surprise.
In 2014, August, a woman from Bartella, Iraq, recounted the night that ISIS came into her village and then into her home and accused her of putting gold coins in her 11-month-old baby's diaper. So they took her baby, threw her baby on the couch, beat her baby, and threw her up against the wall. Eventually, they let her leave, but they kept her husband and made him convert.
In February of 2015, ISIS slaughtered 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach, pointing them towards Rome, and proclaimed this message: ``Signed with blood to the nation of the cross.''
In March of 2016, this month, four nuns, members of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta, were executed by gunmen in Yemen.
Their crime? They were caring for the elderly and the disabled. Pope Francis called them today's martyrs.
Just yesterday gunmen stormed three hotels on the Ivory Coast. Among the 18 people who were killed was a 5-year-old boy--a 5-year-old boy-- who was shot in the head. But eyewitnesses report that the friend who was with him was spared his life because he was able to recite a Muslim prayer.
Mr. Speaker, these are hardly isolated incidents. As we have talked about tonight, this is genocide. The Knights of Columbus submitted a 280-page report chronicling the persecution of Christians by the Islamic State to the State Department this week.
The leader of ISIS recently released a video that made very clear their intent to destroy Christians throughout whatever means possible. He said:
The co-existence of Christians and Jews is impossible, according to the Koran.
I don't think we have to scratch our heads and ask ourselves what is happening in Iraq and Syria. Pope Francis recently condemned the wholesale slaughter of Christians by ISIS, saying that entire Christian families and villages are being completely exterminated.
I look at this House tonight and I am proud that we have so many men and women who are willing to stand up and lend their voice to this great cause.
We have a reputation in America as being a beacon of light, men and women who stand up for freedom, better known as freedom fighters, freedom of life, freedom of religion.
When there are atrocities in the world, we stand up and lend a voice to those who are being persecuted, those who are downtrodden.
I am disappointed that the President has been unwilling to join this House and call the atrocities in Syria and Iraq a genocide. The first step to making sure this ends is that we speak the truth about what is actually happening.
Hopefully, if the President is watching tonight, he will see that we have both Republicans and Democrats who agree on this very important issue. Hopefully, he will join us and take that first step to shedding light on what is happening in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Fortenberry, I commend you for your good efforts on this very important issue. I am proud to stand with you and the rest of this Chamber to make sure those who might not know that people care about them as they are going through pain and anguish--we hear about the sex slaves, young little girls who are held captive, little Christian and Yazidi girls--that they know that people hear them, people care about them, and people are doing here in America all we can to help them out of this crisis. Thank you for your work.
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