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World News

Hillary Clinton: IS Christian persecution is "genocide"

by Hannah Tooley

Hillary Clinton said that the group's persecution of Christians, the Yazidi minority and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East should be defined as genocide.

She said that she had previously been reluctant to use the term in recent months because calling something "genocide" had broad implications.

Her declaration came in response to a voter at a town hall in early-voting state New Hampshire, her last campaign event of 2015.

The voter asked her to use the term genocide to describe the IS killings and spoke about world leaders like Pope Francis and advocacy groups that are using the phrase to define the extremist group's killing of Christians, Yazidis, Kurdish Muslims, as well as other religious and ethnic minorities.

The voter asked: "Will you join those leaders, faith leaders and secular leaders and political leaders from both the right and the left, in calling what is happening by its proper name, genocide?"

The presidential hopeful replied: "I will because we now have enough evidence.

She said that IS's actions were "deliberately aimed at destroying not only the lives, but wiping out the existence of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East in territory controlled by Isis."

More than 100 members of the US Congress introduced a resolution in September calling "atrocities" committed by IS against Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities genocide.

Fr Nadim Nassar, founder of the Awareness Foundation, which builds relationships between Christians and Muslims, told Premier that using words can only get people so far and real discussion and action is needed: "Nobody talks about the role of Saudi Arabia, nobody talks about the role of Turkey, nobody talks about the role of the Gulf countries - but they want to play with the role of Christianity as a political card."

He added that people in the Middle East want a solution: "We want the American politicians and the British politicans to get together and help the Syrians to sit around the table and find a way out of this bloodshed, I don't want Hillary Clinton's sympathy."

Fr Nadim Nassar said that this is a political tool: "She is playing this statement as a card in her game to be the president, she's not concerned about the Christians in Syria, we've been suffering for the last five years - where was Hillary Clinton?"

Listen to Premier's Hannah Tooley speak to Fr Nadim Nassar here:

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