Systematic IS campaign of ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in Northern Iraq

75 years after the beginning of World War II, leading amongst unimaginable atrocities to ethnic cleansing of historical scale, Amnesty International released a report recalling the nightmares of the 20th century.

Not surprisingly the human rights organization uncovered fresh evidence indicating that members of the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) have launched a "systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq, carrying out war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions, against ethnic and religious minorities on a historic scale in northern Iraq."

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser currently in northern in Iraq said "the massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq.”

According to AI's report IS has systematically "targeted non-Arab and non- Sunni Muslim communities, killing or abducting hundreds, possibly thousands, and forcing more than 830,000 others to flee the areas it has captured since 10 June 2014. Ethnic and religious minorities have lived together in the Nineveh province; today, only those who were unable to flee remain trapped there, under threat of death if they do not convert to Islam."

Amnesty's report can be retrieved here.