We cannot be silent in the face of the slaughter in Iraq

Forty thousand followers of the Yazidi faith are huddling, terrified, on the side of Mount Sinjar, fearing that their women are going to be raped, enslaved or killed. Nearly a quarter of Iraq’s Christians have been driven from their homes in the past week alone. In theory, the Islamic State gave them the choice of converting, paying a fine, or leaving. In practice, many were murdered before they could even make that horrendous choice: the militants have, in the words of Canon Andrew White, vicar of Baghdad, “chopped off heads, chopped children in half, hanged people on crosses. The stories are so bad they don’t sound true”. He is understandably angry that so far, Britain and other Western governments have proved deaf to pleas for sanctuary.

The White House warned last week that the situation in Iraq risks becoming a “humanitarian catastrophe”. But the plight of persecuted minorities in the region predates any current debate about the use of American military force. For months, church groups have been trying to raise awareness of this impending tragedy. Here in Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that this is part of an “evil pattern around the world”, in which people are being killed and persecuted simply because of their faith.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11022763/We-cannot-be-silent-in-the-face-of-the-slaughter-in-Iraq.html