The UN Gathers Evidence of Crimes Against Yazidi People

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What is the next step that you’re looking for?

KARIM KHAN, ASSISTANT U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: Firstly, thank you so much for the invitation. The next step is the realization of justice, a fulfillment of the promise that the Security Council, the international community gave Nadia Murad and many other survivors that suffered unbelievable trauma and crimes at the hands of this un-Islamic State. So it’s important to underline, firstly, that we’re not investigating only crimes against the Yazidi community. We have teams that are investigating crimes against the Shia, the Sunni, the Christian, the Turkmen, the Kakai, the Shabak, and also the Yazidis. And, today, we made an announcement, based upon the two-and-a-half years we have been in Iraq, as to the legal characterization of the crimes against the Yazidi community and also the legal characterization of the crimes against mostly Shia, unarmed cadets and other personnel from the Camp Speicher massacre in Tikrit. And we announced that there’s clear and convincing evidence that they are a genocide and incitement to commit genocide respectively. So, I think we have a collective obligation, Christiane, to make sure that we don’t just gather evidence as some kind of academic exercise, so that the papers, the archives, the witness statements, the battlefield evidence adorn some museum. We have to get them into a courtroom, so that survivors can confront their — the perpetrators, and that independent and impartial judges can establish the veracity of the evidence we have collected and give judgments that can stand the test of time. This, after all, is the legacy of Nuremberg. And I think it’s needed for the victims. It’s needed for Iraq. We need to separate this un-Islamic State, this Da’esh, from the Sunni community. And the victims need to know that we didn’t just shed tears when we saw the wonderful reporting of CNN, but, actually, we have the steel in our bones, in our spine to make sure that justice is delivered, and the perpetrators are convicted based upon evidence.

AMANPOUR: Let me — right. So I want to get to that in a second. But, first, let’s have a witness testimonial. One of our colleagues, Atika Shubert, several years ago talked to some of the girls. Here’s a clip from her report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He showed me a letter and said, “This shows any captured women will become Muslim if ten ISIS fighters rape her.”

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Then, Noor (ph) says, he raped her. After that, he gave her to his friends. She says each one raped her. How many men did he pass you to?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I was passed on to 11 others.

SHUBERT: That’s very difficult for anyone to hear, man or woman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)