Let The People Of Mosul Leave and Stop Besieging Civilians as A Tactic of War



Toronto – May 23, 2016 —  As a global humanitarian foundation based in Canada, The RINJ Foundation today urges all parties to the 2016 Civil War in Iraq  to “Let The People Of Mosul Leave and Stop Besieging Civilians as A Tactic of War“.

Heretofore evacuation of the people of the beseiged city has been obstructed by parties on all sides of the conflict.

From Inside Mosul Katie Alsop From Inside Mosul

RINJ has opposed the plan for “Liberation of Mosul” announced in February 2016 by the Iraqi government and welcomes the delay in this action announced yesterday in Baghdad.  (For further information read Mosul Liberation Illusion.)

Relying on the Security Council Resolution 2139 (of 2014) PDF Document and resolutions 2042 (2012), 2043 (2012) and 2118 (2013), and the Security Council’s Presidential Statements of 3 August 2011, 21 March 2012, 5 April 2012 and 2 October 2013, The RINJ Foundation urges all parties to the conflict in Iraq ad Syria to allow the civilians of Mosul, Iraq and those civilians of the  general Nineveh region to leave the area safely to safe havens in United Nations Refugee Camps and that there be a cessation of all hostilities until such time as those camps can be fully created; the evacuation has been accomplished; and all humanitarian concerns have been met

In 2014 the United Nations Security Council demanded that all parties “allow delivery of humanitarian assistance, cease depriving civilians of food and medicine indispensable to their survival, and enable the rapid, safe and unhindered evacuation of all civilians who wished to leave”.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted when resolution 2139 first passed on 22 Feb, 2014 that it “should not have been necessary”, as humanitarian assistance “is not something to be negotiated; it is something to be allowed by virtue of international law”.

The RINJ Foundation further urges the UN Security Council to enable by whatever means the capture, arrest and prosecution of any person identifying as a member of  the group calling itself The Islamic State for the following crimes against humanity in 2016:

Significant Crimes Against Humanity By The Islamic State in Mosul 2016
DateActionDeadInjuredDetails
Jan 1 to May 24RapeThousandsThe Islamic State daily rapes by gender-based and by ethnic-based order & decree  hundreds of children and dozens or more women.
Feb 8Execution3000Islamic State have executed over 300 police and army
personal, as well as civil activists by firing squad in Mosul.
April 20Falling50
Islamic State
 executed
two of its elements and three civilians by throwing them from the top of a high building in the area of Bab al-Tub in central Mosul
April 21Shooting250+UnknownAt least 250 Iraqi woman were executed by Islamic State fighters because they refused to become sex slaves.
April 26Drowning70Islamic State members
executed seven civilians by drowning them inside metal cages in al-Faysaliya
area in central Mosul
May 2Shooting170Islamic State has
executed 17 people in the city of Mosul, for refusing to fight the Iraqi security forces.
May 5Shooting250Islamic State executed 25
of its fighters, including four leaders, after fleeing from the battlefield.
May 11Shooting5UnknownIslamic State selects
five young civilians to take their handguns and shoot five Iraqi soldiers in the head.
May 13Shooting5UnknownISIL executed five by firing squad on charges of spying and cooperating
with the security forces.
May 13Burning11The  Fighters purportedly set the house of a Christian on fire after the resident refused to them Jaziya. 
May 16Stoning21UnknownThe so-called al-Hisba
elements arrested a woman and 20 youths on charges of having illegal relations, and put them on the main road in Tahrir neighborhood in front of al-Zahra mosque
in eastern Mosul. The elements of al-Hisba began stoning the woman and
the youths for almost an hour till death.
May 18Chemical execution25UnknownISIS terrorist members executed 25 persons in Mosul on charges of spying
and collaborating with Iraqi security forces, ISIS put the citizens in a large tub containing nitric acid inside one of its headquarters. ISIS members tied each person with a rope and lowered him in the tub, which contains nitric acid, till the victims organs dissolve.

The threat to civilians posed by the continuation of the aforementioned alleged crimes (allegedly against all of humanity) is their extinction as a class of people.

speaking-from-mosul-The-RINJ-Foundation

The threat to women, children and their families of many ethnic and religious groups is extinction. This cannot continue.

The actions of the parties to the conflicts in the regions once recognized as the nations states of Syria and Iraq include the decimation of whole cities and villages like Kobane, Tikrit, Ramadi and more. This is feared for the cities of Mosul and Fallujah, Iraq (to a lessor extent in Fallujah.)

The wholesale murder of civilians since the commencement of hostilities in 2012 has been the consequence of actions by all actors existing in or invading these regions and the perpetrators will be held accountable not just in the present but by future generations.

It is therefore imperative that the parties to the conflict let the people of Mosul leave and stop besieging civilians as a tactic of war.