2011
November 30: “Conditions for genocide against non-Muslim communities exist in varying degrees throughout the region stretching from Pakistan to Morocco.”
– Dr. John Eibner, Christian Solidarity International-USA
December 9: “The position of Christians in the region [the Middle East] is more vulnerable than it has been for centuries.”
– Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams
December 9: “We are facing religious cleansing in parts of the Middle East.”
– John Patten, Member of the House of Lords
2012
November: “The next genocide in the world will likely be against the Alawites in Syria.”
– Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith
November 5: Christianity is “the most persecuted religion worldwide.”
– Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
November 15: “Growing numbers of foreign Sunni extremist fighters are battling not just to rid Syria of Mr. Assad, but to religiously cleanse it.”
– Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect
December: “The Commission has received credible reports of anti-Government armed groups attacking Alawites and other pro-Government minority communities [in Syria]. …Entire communities are at risk of being forced out of [Syria] or of being killed inside the country.”
– UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic
December: “There is now a serious risk that Christianity will disappear from its biblical heartlands.”
– Rupert Shortt, Civitas
2013
April 2: “The future of Christians in the Middle East is very bleak. What has happened in Iraq and Syria is de facto ethnic cleansing of Christians.”
– Neil Hicks, Human Rights First
October 1: “Wherever they are, the Christians of the East are not only threatened, but hunted down and liquidated.”
– Laurent Fabius, French Foreign Minister
November 15: “Christian populations are plummeting and the religion is being driven out of some of its historic heartlands. In some places, there is a real danger that Christianity will become extinct.”
– Baroness Sayeedi Warsi, United Kingdom Senior Minister of State
December 17: “It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are increasingly being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants.”
– Charles, Prince of Wales
2014
January 6: “We see the Middle East emptying of its historic Christian populations.”
– Robert P. George, chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
August 7: “ISIL forces have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide. …We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide.”
– President Barack Obama
August 8: “ISIL’s campaign of terror against the innocent, including Yazidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide.”
– Secretary of State John Kerry
2015
February 23: “Turkmen, Shabaks, Christians, Yezidi, Sabaeans, Kaka’e, Faili Kurds, Shi’ite Arab, and others have been intentionally and systematically targeted by ISIL and associated armed groups and subjected to gross human rights abuses, in what appears as a deliberate policy aimed at destroying, suppressing or expelling these communities permanently from areas under their control. …[these] may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide.”
– United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq
July 9: “Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus. In this third world war, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is taking place, and it must end.”
– Pope Francis I