“The group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) has carried out ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq.”<br /><br />So says Amnesty International which has published a new report detailing what it calls “gruesome evidence” of “moves to wipe out minorities” such as Yazidis.<br /><br />With a view to holding perpetrators to account, the United Nations has already agreed to send investigators to Iraq to examine what it calls “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale”. <br /><br />“These terrorist activities by ISIL are totally unacceptable by international human rights and international humanitarian law,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking on a visit to New Zealand.<br /><br />Amnesty International says IS is waging a “brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims” in northern Iraq, which is “leading thousands to flee in fear for their lives”.<br /><br />Convert to Islam or die demands, accounts of mass killings and abductions and reports of rape and sexual abuse fill a report full of harrowing human suffering that makes grim reading indeed.
