ICC Note: At a conference in New York city, Christian and Yazidi victims of ISIS shared their experiences as a call to action. Stories were graphic and raw, as testimonies showed desolation as well as forgiveness. These victims are shared their horrible stories as a plea for more to be done for their communities as they still suffer vast oppression and genocide in Iraq and Syria. 

05/02/2016 Middle East (Eurasia Review): The stories were graphic, brutal and raw.

One account told of a couple whose children had been captured by Islamic State militants. When they answered their door one day, they found a plastic bag on their doorstep. It contained the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being raped and tortured.

Another recalled a Christian woman from Mosul who answered the door to find ISIS foreign fighters, demanding that she leave or pay a jizya tax.

She asked for a few seconds, her daughter being in the shower, but the fighters refused to give her the time. They put a torch to the house, burning and eventually killing her daughter.

The girl died in her mother’s arms, but her last words were “Forgive them.”

These were the stories that emerged from a conference on Christian persecution that took place in New York City on Thursday.

Several of the stories were recounted by Jacqueline Isaac, a human rights attorney and vice president of the advocacy group Roads of Success.

Her mother, president of the group, had testified before British Parliament the previous week after having returned from Homs, Syria. Isaac relayed many of her stories, noting both the savage and vicious acts being committed, and the stories of heroism and forgiveness.

“See, in the midst of darkness, there is light, and it is that light that has us sitting here today, because when there is light, there is hope,” she said.

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On Thursday morning, the congress was held at the United Nations headquarters and sponsored by the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the U.N. It featured testimonies on the persecution of Christians from victims of ISIS, missionaries in Syria, and other religious and civic leaders.

Speakers shared horrific descriptions of ISIS atrocities.

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