Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today in support of the motion put forward by my colleague, the member for Calgary Nose Hill. She has been a relentless advocate for the rights of women and girls, especially on behalf of the Yazidi girls in Syria and Iraq.
I also want to note that I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Shepard.
The motion before the House today focuses on the egregious and ongoing abuses faced by Yazidi women and girls, and identifies these actions as genocide. I want to take a moment to examine the Yazidi people, who have been subjected to this human rights abuse.
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states that a crime of genocide is committed when a person commits a prohibited act “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
In the case of Yazidis, they are an ethno-religious group, who identify with both ancestral heritage and shared religious culture. The Yazidis are ethnically Kurdish and practice Yazidism, which combines parts of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and is believed to have originated in the 12th century. Today, the majority of this ethno-religious group can be found in the Nineveh region of Iraq, but smaller communities can be found throughout Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Russia.
The Yazidi people clearly qualify as a group under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide based on their distinct ethnic and religious characteristics.
I think it is also important to examine why Yazidis, as well as Christians and Shia Muslims, are being targeted by ISIS. Each of these religious communities has faced horrific injustice at the hands of ISIS. However, the Yazidis face a fierce persecution since ISIS has branded them as devil worshippers. ISIS propaganda has shown a particular focus on trying to portray the Yazidis as subhuman.
One ISIS victim testified about her captor, “He told us that Taus Malik”, which is one of seven angels to whom the Yazidis pray, “is not God. He said that Taus Malik is the devil and that because you worship the devil, you belong to us. We can sell you and use you as we see fit.” In fact, an official ISIS ruling encouraged the sexual abuse and enslavement of Yazidi women and girls precisely because they were less than human as unbelievers.
The experiences of Yazidi women and girls, once captured, reflect a level of brutality and horror that is hard to comprehend or portray. Allow me to share the words of 22-year-old Noor, as she and other Yazidi women were enslaved for several months by ISIS:
Just imagine for a moment that you wake up one morning and watch as all the men in your family are taken away. A few hours later you hear the sounds of machine guns and screams.
Then imagine your terror as you, your grandmother, your mum, your sisters and your aunties, are herded on buses and driven away by the same people who took the men.
Imagine then being sold at a slave market a few days later along with your little sister to a man old enough to be your grandfather, who is fat and ugly and stinks of body odour.
Finally imagine being raped by this man every day from then on, and when he’s bored with you, being turned over to his six guards to use as their plaything, to be gang raped after they’ve got themselves excited watching pornographic DVDs.
It sounds like the worst nightmare any girl could have, but for her, it was a reality. It was her life for a few short months. This has been the experience of countless Yazidi women and girls, and many more continue to be enslaved.
Last June, the House had the opportunity to denounce the actions of ISIS specifically with a motion “that the House strongly condemn these atrocities and declare that these crimes constitute genocide.”
As a newly elected member of Parliament, I was optimistic that the motion would receive support from all parties and present a strong statement to the world of Canada's commitment against ISIS and genocide, but more important, unanimous support for the motion would have sent a strong message of hope to the Yazidi victims of ISIS that we recognize the gravity of the injustices they have experienced. However, I was ashamed that when we had the opportunity to be united against evil, the Liberal government refused to acknowledge the actions of ISIS as genocide.
To be clear, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines a genocide as the commission of prohibited acts against a group with the intent to destroy. Prohibited acts include killing members of this group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to this group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The UN report on the crimes against the Yazidis found that ISIS had committed every single prohibited act listed on the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Despite the overwhelming documented evidence of genocide, in June the Liberals alone voted against declaring the actions of ISIS a genocide. Conservatives are not afraid to label these crimes what they are, a genocide.
Today's motion is an opportunity for the government to correct its inaction on this important issue and to do the right thing. The Conservatives are calling on the government to develop an appropriate plan and corresponding action to respond to this humanitarian crisis.
As an automotive technician, I know first-hand that if we cannot measure it, we cannot manage it and we cannot improve it. The Liberal government has no plan to assist Yazidi women and girls, even though the Conservatives brought forward numerous recommendations for focusing on three key areas: humanitarian aid, military intervention, and resettlement. For example, we called on the government to act upon the June 16 United Nations recommendation to accelerate the asylum claims of Yazidi victims of genocide, as well as review the selection process used by the United Nations to identify refugees for the government-sponsored refugee stream and encourage changes, if any were necessary.
While many Yazidi men, women, and children have escaped ISIS and now live in refugee camps, they continue to face violence and persecution, as a result of their ethnicity and religion, from other refugees. The previous Conservative government attempted to prioritize persecuted religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities for resettlement in Canada.
ISIS continues to commit genocide against the Yazidis. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls continue to be raped, tortured, sold, and enslaved by ISIS. By refusing to act, the government has failed these Yazidi victims. We must take immediate action and I call on all members of the House to support the motion. This is the first step toward action. From here, we can build and go forward.