Persecuted Yazidis who have suffered terrible treatment at the hands of ISIS are denied refuge in the UK if they happen to fall the wrong side of the Iraqi-Syrian border, MPs were told today.
The government's Vulnerable Persons Resettlement programme has seven criteria, one of which is that a refugee must have Syrian identity documents to be granted asylum in Britain. But that means hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Mosul and its surrounding area in northern Iraq are abandoned by the initiative with no hope of being offered safety in the UK.
The Home Office was urged to address this "oversight" in a Parliamentary debate on Tuesday. Brendan O'Hara, SNP MP for Argyll and Bute, told the government it must not allow "one of the most abused and vulnerable groups of people on this earth, simply to be subsumed into the greater refugee crisis".
He called for a specific scheme for persecuted Yazidis, a group which many experts say has been victim of a genocide. Yazidism is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism, which blends ancient religious traditions with both Christianity and Islam. Islamic State believes them to be "devil-worshippers".
UN researchers have confirmed that when ISIS militants took over the Sinjar region in northern Iraq in August 2014, up to 5,000 Yazidi men were killed in a series of massacres that forced more than 400,000 people to flee.
Thousands of women were taken captive and disturbing accounts of have emerged from those who have since managed to escape. Women and children have been brutally raped and abused; bartered and sold among jihadists for as little as a packet of cigarettes.
"I ask the government, please recognise what these women and children have gone through," O'Hara said.
"See them as the unique case that they are and together, let's seek a specific UK response that recognises the unspeakable atrocities they have suffered simply because of who they are and what they believe."
Home Office minister Sarah Newton said the Yazidis' plight was "utterly harrowing" but refused to allow them into the scheme.
She insisted the government was doing "everything we can" on the ground in Iraq which she said was better than offering relocation to the UK.
"We are supporting projects on the ground in Mosul which are particularly targeted on helping the Yazidi community," she said in the debate.
The All-Party Group for Freedom of Religion and Belief backed O'Hara's call and and a spokeswoman told Christian Today "the choice [to relocate] should be available for people". She added that Yazidis were told their situation was not deemed serious enough to be given the option of sanctuary in the UK.
"We think that is an oversight by the government when all the media's attention was on Syria," she said.
O'Hara cited a "Special Quote Programme" that allows Yazidi women and children to receive specialist support in Germany. "Germany offers a safe haven and I see no reason why the UK cannot also provide a safe haven," he told MPs. "We must commit to help and cannot stand by and leave it to others."
Speaking after the debate he told Christian Today: "The UK can be a safehaven if it chooses to be. If we don't do something now, we choose to do nothing.
"And if we do nothing... then history will be our judge and I predict it will pass a particularly harsh judgement upon us."
