State Department lawyers are scrubbing references to the ISIS genocide of Christians and other religious minorities, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.
Richard Visek, appointed by former President Barack Obama to head the State Department's office of legal adviser, made the decision to remove the word "genocide" from official documents, Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer who directs the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, told the Free Beacon.
"I don't think for a minute it's a bureaucratic decision—it's ideological," Shea told the Free Beacon.
According to the Free Beacon, the development appears aimed at rolling back former Secretary of State John Kerry's March 2016 genocide determination – a designation some lawmakers and activists, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R.-Fla., and Rep. Robert Aderholt, R.-Ala., hoped would direct relief funds to Christian, Yazidi, and other religious minority communities.
The State Department was sued by the American Center for Law and Justice last year for failing to provide information about what was being done to stop the genocide, Townhall reported.
ISIS murders and kidnappings have decimated the Christian population in Iraq, which numbered between 800,000 and 1.4 million in 2002, reducing it to fewer than 250,000 now, according to the Free Beacon.
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