Robert Fisk: The Christian tragedy in the Middle East started with the Armenian Genocide

The Christian tragedy in the Middle East did not begin with ISIS, writes Robert Fisk, The Independent’s multiple award-winning Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut.

According to him, “hundred years on from the Armenian genocide, a Christian minority is again suffering.”

“The Christian tragedy in the Middle East today needs to be re-thought – as it will be, of course, when Armenians around the world commemorate the 100th anniversary of the genocide of their people by Ottoman Turkey. Perhaps it is time that we acknowledge not only this act of genocide but come to regard it not as just the murder of a minority within the Ottoman Empire, but specifically a Christian minority, killed because they were Armenian but also because they were Christian (many of whom, unfortunately, rather liked the Orthodox, anti-Ottoman Tsar),” Robert Fisk writes.

“And their fate bears some uncommon parallels with the Islamic State murderers of today. The Armenian men were massacred.  The women were gang-raped or forced to convert or left to die of hunger. Babies were burned alive – after being stacked in piles. Islamic State cruelty is not new, even if the cult’s technology defeats anything its opponents can achieve,” the author continues.