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A Yazidi mother’s torment in Iraq, four years after the genocide

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Yazidi mother’s torment in Iraq

“Without the children, I would have killed myself.” Kocher, a Yazidi mother from Iraq, survived two years in “IS” captivity. The atrocities suffered have left her full of rage. Three of her children are still missing.

Since her return, Kocher has been wearing black only. Time does not heal all wounds, not, when you have returned from hell. Since her liberation from the “Islamic State,” (IS) Kocher, her husband Mahmood, and her five youngest daughters have been living on the barren plateau of Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq.

They are refugees stranded inside their own country. Their recent torments are not spoken about in the family: “It’s too late for me,” says 40-year-old Kocher, only hinting at her pain.

The claws of the past

Her thoughts constantly return to her three older children — her two sons, Saadon, who is 22 now, and Firaz, who is 18, as well as her 15-year-old daughter Aveen. Their whereabouts remain unknown. Only the vague hope of a reunion keeps Kocher from succumbing to the clutches of the past.

During her many sleepless nights, she is tortured by the question of why she is among the survivors. Her five daughters, aged four to 13, are also terrified at night. For Kocher, there is no doubt that “without the children, I would have killed myself.”

The genocidal attack

Kocher’s nightmare began on August 3, 2014 when IS militia invaded the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq, which for centuries had been the heartland of the Yazidi minority. For the self-proclaimed jihadis of the “caliphate” Yazidis were “infidels” and “devil worshippers.”

The invaders committed unimaginable atrocities, including mass executions, which the UN has classed as genocide. So far, however, no one has been held accountable.

In August 2014, some 50,000 terrified Yazidis headed up Mount Sinjar, the holy mountain of the Yazidi people, in a desperate bid to seek protection on the harsh and inaccessible terrain of a high plateau. Seeking refuge on their holy mountain seemed to be their only hope.

Together with other families from her neighborhood, Kocher and eight of her children braved the difficult serpentine road. Her husband Mahmood stayed behind to care for his elderly parents.

The enslavement

Kocher’s group had made it half way up the mountain when they were intercepted by IS fighters and either killed or enslaved. Weathered clothes, torn underwear and faded shoes strewn along the roadside still document how Yazidis attempted to escape their fate.

“They also took older women than me and forced them to marry five or six men,” says Kocher. Not once does she use the word rape. “They exchanged women for a cigarette and gave each other women as presents.”

Time and again, Kocher and other mothers were separated from their children. She lost contact with her two older sons, her daughter Aveen was forcibly married to an IS fighter in Mosul. They only brought her back to see her mother once. The girl was dressed in black and fully veiled, with bridal make-up on her face.A further humiliation: “It is one of the great pleasures of a mother to put make-up on her daughter’s face for her wedding.” Since that day, there has been no further sign of life from Aveen.

The burden of liberation

Yazidi Survived Islamic State will they Survive Erdogan Attack? Yazidi shrines have already burned in Afrin

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by Fazel Hawramy

KHANASOOR, Iraq — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said March 25 that Turkey had begun operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. “We said we would go into Sinjar. Now operations have begun there. The fight is internal and external,” Erdogan said before a crowd in Turkey’s Trabzon province.

Two days prior to Erdogan’s statement, PKK fighters began withdrawing from Sinjar in order to avoid the targeting of civilians in the area.

For Dezhwar, a young Yazidi fighter in the Sinjar area, the silence of the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) regarding the all-out Turkish attack on the city of Afrin, home to a sizable Yazidi community, was a bitter reminder that in the game of realpolitik between states, minorities such as the Yazidis have no one to turn to.

Despite the Turkish president’s threats, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said late March 25 that no foreign forces had crossed the border into Iraq and there were no reports of unusual military activity.

The news from Afrin is gloomy for many Yazidis in Sinjar who survived IS attacks in the summer of 2014. Reports say that their shrines are being burned in Afrin and that some Yazidi civilians who stayed behind in the area have been forced to convert to Islam by extremist elements of the Free Syrian Army backed and armed by the Turkish government.

Yazidi civilians in Sinjar fear that they are the next target of the mighty US-supplied F-16s of the Turkish state, as Erdogan threatens “another Operation Olive Branch” in Sinjar to “clear the region of terrorists.”

In August 2014, Dezhwar, who served in the 2nd Division of the Iraqi army for eight years, watched as IS caused havoc in Sinjar, killing and enslaving thousands of Yazidis and blowing up their shrines. While Iraqi and Kurdish forces abandoned the Yazidis, and Turkey was alleged to have allowed its territory to become a main artery for foreign fighters who arrived from across the world to reinforce IS in Raqqa and Mosul, Dezhwar watched as a group of Syrian Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) came to the rescue of Yazidi civilians. He was so impressed by the bravery and discipline of the YPG fighters that he and around three dozen other Yazidis stayed behind and, supported by the group, formed the nucleus for a local Yazidi militia that became known as the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS).

Erdogan Yazidi Massacre in Afrin: Children Killed, Villages Bombed, Temples Destroyed

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yazidi Afrin on the run again from Erdogan Thugs

yazidi Afrin on the run again from Erdogan Thugs

By Uzay Bulut,

Yazidis, a historically persecuted non-Muslim people in the Middle East, are yet again fleeing for their lives — this time from Turkey-backed jihadists invading Afrin in northern Syria.

Murad Ismael, executive director of Yazda, a relief organization for Yazidi victims of genocide, has alerted the world to the deadly threat posed by Turkish airstrikes many times on his social media accounts and on March 12 wrote on Twitter:

“We are evaluating what to do when the [whole] city falls, including an option to ask our people to leave the region altogether. We cannot have our people in Afrin under Al Nusra and other fundamentalists.”

On March 18, his worst fears became reality. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that the Turkish military and Turkey-backed jihadists of Free Syrian Army (FSA) took complete control of Afrin city center.

Saad Babir, Yazda’s media director, said that since the beginning of the invasion, jihadists have attacked and captured several Yazidi villages as Turkish planes bombed the area including the Yazidi village of Ternda, which has been bombed by the Turkish military around 20 times.

There are 30 Yazidi villages located in Afrin and surrounding territories with a Yazidi population of around 20,000, Babir said in an exclusive interview with Haym Salomon Center.

 The death toll has been heavy. “Many Yazidi civilians, including children, have been murdered,” Babir said.

Hundreds of Yazidis have already fled their villages, and they are in need of food and medicine, he added.

Babir also pointedly remarked that Turkey-backed jihadists have destroyed many Yazidi temples in Afrin and converted others into mosques.

Yazidis are an indigenous and oppressed minority in the region with their own unique culture. The Islamic State (ISIS) invasion of Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidis in Iraq, in August 2014 finally brought this persecuted community to the attention of the world. Yazidis say they have been subjected to 72 genocidal massacres. The latest genocide, committed by ISIS in Iraq, is the 73rd.

Following the invasion, ISIS terrorists kidnapped, raped and sold hundreds of Yazidi women and children. Babir said that over 3,000 Yazidi women and children are still held as captives by ISIS.

News reports on German TV channels NDR and SWR in 2015 revealed that Yazidis were also sold through an office in the city of Gaziantep in Turkey, near the border with Syria.

On April 17, 2016, the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet reported that the Gaziantep police had raided the said office and found $370,000, many foreign (non-Turkish) passports, and 1,768 pages of Arabic receipts that demonstrate the transfer of millions of dollars between Turkey and Syria.

Six Syrians were brought to court for their involvement in crimes. All defendants were acquitted due to a “lack of evidence,” but the Gaziantep Bar Association, which had filed a criminal complaint about the perpetrators, was not even invited to attend the hearings.

“The court made the decision of acquittal without looking into the documents found by police,” said lawyer Mehmet Yalçınkaya, a member of the association. “We learned the decision of acquittal by coincidence. The fact that the trial ended in only 16 days and that the documents of 1,768 pages were submitted to the court after the decision of acquittal shows that it was not an effective trial.”

Mahmut Toğrul, an MP of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP), in a motion to Efkan Ala, Turkey’s then interior minister, asked questions about the office where ISIS members engaged in slavery and the sex trade. Ala provided no answers.

Toğrul has also been very critical of Turkey’s invasion of Afrin. On March 7, during a session at Turkey’s parliament, he criticized President Erdogan over his stated aim to carry out a demographic change in Afrin by sending Syrians in Turkey to Afrin. When Toğrul called this attempt by Erdogan an “ethnic cleansing,” MPs of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) physically attacked him.

Toğrul later described the incident: “About 40 of them started coming towards us in a frenzy. They began punching me and my friends. I fell to the ground, and they continued to kick me. I was seriously beaten.”

The Turkish government — with the help of the jihadists — openly targets and violates civilians in Afrin and beats up an opposition MP who calls for non-violence in the region.

Has NATO become so ineffective and weak that it cannot do anything to stop these atrocities?

Uzay Bulut is a journalist and political analyst from Turkey

Iraqi forces unearth another Yazidi mass grave in Sinjar

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Iraqi security officials say government forces have found a mass grave in the country’s northern province of Nineveh, containing the bodies of dozens of members of Yazidi minority, who are believed to have been executed by Takfiri Daesh terrorists when they were in control of a terrain.

Local official Chokor Melhem Elias told AFP on Wednesday that “the mass grave contains the bodies of 73 people, men, women and children executed by Daesh terrorists when they controlled… Sinjar.”

He said Iraqi forces made the latest discovery in the Rambussi area near the town of Qahtaniyah, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Mosul.

Back in August 2014, Daesh terrorists overran Sinjar, killing, raping, and enslaving large numbers of Yazidi.

The region was recaptured in November 2015, during an operation by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters.

The Office of Kidnapped Affairs in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk said earlier this year that around 3,500 Izadi Kurds were still being held captive by Daesh extremists, adding that a large proportion of the abductees were women and children.

The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government announced in early August that Daesh’s genocide against Izadis had forced nearly 360,000 members of the minority to flee their hometowns, and another 90,000 had left Iraq and taken refuge in others countries.

It added that Daesh militants have kidnapped 6,417 Izadi Kurds, including 1,102 women and 1,655 children, since 2014.

Additionally, 2,645 children have lost their first line of protection, and the number includes 220 kids whose parents are still being held captive.

Missing Yazidi women and children hiding in plain sight

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While the “Islamic State” (IS) has lost most of its cities in Iraq and Syria, thousands of Yazidis it kidnapped are still missing. Activists say some are being hidden within IS families. Judit Neurink reports from Irbil.

Almost half of the over 6,000 Yazidis kidnapped three years ago by the IS group have still not been found. Yet many of them are hidden in plain sight, aid workers and Yazidi activists say, living with Arab families who have sought refuge in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps.

Forced to convert to Islam, they now fear for their lives if they are found, aid worker and Yazidi activist Mirza Dinaye says. He is calling for an active search and for the Yazidis to be returned to their families.

They are victims of the IS policy to eradicate the Yazidi faith, he says. “We know they are completely assimilated into the Muslim community. They think the Yazidi faith has been eradicated, and often suffer from Stockholm syndrome,” — a special, often intimate relationship between victims and kidnappers.

That was the case for Mediha Ibrahim, 13, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by IS in August 2014, who spent the next three years living with the families of Turkish IS fighters in their stronghold of Talafar. During that time, they turned her into a Muslim.

Sold to Turkish IS families

“I forgot my Kurdish,” she admits in Turkish as she devours a pizza in a restaurant outside the camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq where she has recently been reunited with her uncles along with two of her brothers who were helped to escape. Her parents and another brother are still missing, but the latter has been identified in pictures posted on the Facebook account of an IS fighter. Just like Mediha, her brother has been taken into the fighter’s family and hidden away.

Mediha’s first Turkish owner in Talafar, Abu Yousef, had three wives and several children. “He beat me and sold me to another family,” she says. She stayed a bit longer with Abu Ali and his wife Fatima, who came from Bursa in Turkey, before they sold her to Abu Ahmed and Zahida from Konya. She was given a new name, Hadjar. By that time, she had taught herself Turkish and been sent to school to learn Arabic. She prayed five times a day and enjoyed reading the Quran.

She was told she could never go back to her family and that it would be better to forget about them altogether. “I felt like a Muslim, not like a Yazidi. They said that my family would kill me if they found out I had left our faith.”

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/missing-yazidi-women-and-children-hiding-in-plain-sight/a-41425642

Iraqi Kurdistan: Expelle Yezidi Fighters and Families “Collective Punishment”

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KRG Expel YazidiForced Returns, Threats Amount to Collective Punishment,

(Beirut) – Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) forces have expelled at least four Yezidi families and threatened others since June 2017 because of their relatives’ participation in Iraqi government forces, Human Rights Watch said today. The KRG’s security forces, Asayish, returned the displaced families to Sinjar, where access to basic goods and services is very limited.

The expulsion of Yezidi families from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) because a relative joined the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha’abi or PMF) amounts to collective punishment in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch said.

“Kurdistan Regional Government authorities should stop expelling Yezidi families because of their relatives’ actions, a form of collective punishment,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “These displaced families have the right not to be forcibly returned to their still-damaged home villages.”

Human Rights Watch spoke to three Yezidi commanders who said that Yezidi forces had been integrated into the PMF under the name Yezidi Brigades (Kata’ib Ezidkhan), with the forces holding positions in four areas of Sinjar. Sinjar is technically under Iraqi central government administrative control, but KRG security forces remain active in the area and control the main road from Sinjar to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

In late June and early July, Human Rights Watch interviewed nine displaced Yezidis originally from Kocho, Tel Kassab, and Siba Sheikh Khidr villages in Sinjar, which the PMF retook from the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in May. All had been living in the KRI and did not want to return to their villages because of widespread destruction of property, mass graves, unexploded improvised explosive devices, and the lack of water and electricity. Their families had fled Sinjar in August 2014, after ISIS attacked the area, massacring and enslaving thousands of Yezidis. All those interviewed said that Asayish threatened them with expulsion because they had relatives who joined the Yezidi Brigades, and in four cases, they alleged that Asayish forces had forcibly expelled them to Sinjar as recently as July 5, 2017.

A Yezidi man who had been living in a camp near the town of Zakho in the KRI said that in late May, three of his sons joined the PMF’s Yezidi Brigades. On June 12, an Asayish officer told him to appear at the local Asayish office the following day. He said that when he arrived, officers told him that if he did not get his sons to leave the PMF and return to the camp, he and 15 family members would need to leave the KRI by June 21 and return to Kocho.

His sons did not leave the group, and on June 29, Asayish officers at the camp ordered him and his family to leave immediately. He asked for a 24-hour extension to get his family ready, but the officers refused. An officer drove him and his family to Sinjar. “I don’t know what to do next,” he said. “My village was completely destroyed, and there is no water or electricity in the area.”

Another Yezidi man who had been living in a camp near the city of Dohuk said that his father had joined the Yezidi Brigades in late May. On June 21, Asayish officers at the camp told him his family of 10 had one week to convince his father to come home or they would be expelled from the KRI. On June 30, the officers told him that because his father had not returned, the family would need to leave that same day, he said.

He said his uncle has close ties with the KRG, and so officers said they would spare the family the shame of picking them up at their tent, and would instead allow a relative to drive them to Sinjar. “We are now living with a relative in Khanasoor [in Sinjar], because our village is still littered in landmines,” he said. “We don’t know what we will do.”

A Yezidi man living in a camp near Zakho said that on June 17, two Asayish officers from the camp management office told him that they knew his brother had joined the Yezidi Brigades, and that if his brother did not leave the group within four days, his family of 10 would be returned to Kocho, in Sinjar. The man said that he had two brothers who had joined the Yezidi Brigades and that they would not be willing to leave the armed group. At least 10 other families at the camp told him that Asayish had made the same demand of them. He said he and the other families expected to be expelled any day.

One Yezidi Brigades commander said that on June 24, Asayish officers called his family, who live in a village near Dohuk, into the city’s Asayish office. An officer made his wife sign a pledge that she and her two daughters would leave the KRI within seven days because of her husband’s role within the PMF, he said. “I don’t know where I should move my family,” he said. “I can’t bring them here to Sinjar. My older daughter is an engineering student at the American University of Dohuk and we cannot interrupt her studies.”

A Yezidi woman who had been held captive by ISIS for a year and a half, now living with two relatives in a town near Dohuk, said that her brother joined the Yezidi Brigades in mid-May. On June 14, an Asayish officer came to her home and told her to come to the local Asayish office the following morning. When she arrived, an officer there told her that if her brother did not leave the PMF, she and her two relatives would need to return to Kocho. She said she had persuaded her brother to leave the Yezidi Brigades and he informed Asayish that he had.

Human Rights Watch received reports from a Yezidi rights’ activist of another 15 Yezidi families who were expelled and returned to Sinjar by Asayish forces, but could not confirm the report.

On June 23, Human Rights Watch sent a set of questions regarding these allegations to Dr. Dindar Zebari, chairperson of the KRG’s High Committee to Evaluate and Respond to International Reports. Human Rights Watch has not received a response.

In 2016, Human Rights Watch documented severe restrictions on moving goods in and out of Sinjar that interfered with residents’ livelihoods and their ability to get food, water, and medical care. Three aid workers told Human Rights Watch that the situation had improved dramatically since May. However, while more goods are moving into Sinjar as more families have returned in 2017, many items have been heavily taxed, making them beyond the reach of many families.

In 2016, Human Rights Watch had also documented cases in which Asayish forces ordered families to leave the same camps and areas in and around Dohuk and threatened to expel others from the KRI after learning that their children had joined forces affiliated with the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê or PKK) in Sinjar.

International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment, which includes any form of punitive sanction or harassment by authorities on targeted groups of people for actions that they did not personally commit.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provide that all internally displaced persons have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose their residence (principle 14). They also have the right to seek safety in another part of the country and to be protected against forcible return to “any place where their life, safety, liberty and/or health would be at risk” (principle 15).

“While the Kurdistan Regional Government may not like the Popular Mobilization Forces, punishing family members of PMF fighters is the wrong – and unlawful – way to address the issue,” Fakih said.

New Armenian temple is beacon of hope for Yazidis

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A gleaming white structure topped with seven domes, set to be the world’s biggest Yazidi temple, is being built in a tiny village in Armenia.

Long persecuted, most recently by Islamic jihadists in Iraq, the Kurdish-speaking, religious minority hopes the new temple will prove a symbol of strength as it tries to preserve its unique blend of faiths.

Yazidis, adherents of an ancient religion rooted in Zoroastrianism, number around 35,000 in Armenia today but currently have just one tiny temple in the Caucasus country.

The new edifice, called Quba Mere Diwane, is being constructed in Aknalich, a village 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the capital, Yerevan, thanks to funding by a wealthy Moscow-based Yazidi businessman Mirza Sloyan, who was born nearby.

Aknalich is home to 150 Yazidis, as well as the existing temple, built in 2012 which only holds up to 30 people.

Created from granite and marble, the new 25-metre-high (82-foot) structure will include a large prayer hall, religious school and museum. Its seven domes represent seven angels revered by the Yazidis.

‘Glimmer of hope’ 

Of the world’s 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest community is in Iraq where they have long been one of the country’s most vulnerable minorities. Persecution by Saddam Hussein forced thousands of families to flee.

In August 2014, Yazidis were brutally targeted by Islamic State jihadists when their bastion Sinjar in northwestern Iraq was seized. They suffered crimes which the United Nations has described as genocide.

“We suffered terrible losses in Sinjar and are extremely depressed, but this temple gives us a glimmer of hope for revival,” said Sheikh Hasan Hasanyan, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Yazidis.

“If we can build such a splendid temple, that means Yazidis withstood, they didn’t give up,” he told AFP by telephone.

An old prayer 

The ex-Soviet country’s largest minority group, Yazidis are well integrated into Armenian society, enjoy freedom of religious belief, and publish Yazidi-language newspapers and textbooks.

But widespread poverty and unemployment have sent a wave of migrants to Europe, Russia and the United States in search of work.

“I hope that the new temple will motivate my children — who are living in Europe — to come back to Aknalich, remind them that they are Yazidis,” said local resident Misha Davrshyan.

Yazidis worship one God, who, they believe, created the world and entrusted it to seven Holy Beings, the most important of which is Melek Taus, or Peacock Angel.

Their unique beliefs — which over time integrated elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have often been misconstrued as satanic.

Orthodox Muslims consider the peacock a demon figure and refer to Yazidis as devil-worshippers.

Fearing assimilation, Yazidis discourage marriage outside the community and even across their caste system, and strictly follow traditional customs — some refrain from eating lettuce or wearing the colour blue.

“We have no state and, as a vulnerable minority, we risk imminent assimilation if we stop protecting our traditions,” said Hasanyan.

He said he hoped that the new temple, expected to open this year, “will become a major spiritual centre for Yazidi pilgrims from all over the world.”

“There is an old Yazidi prayer asking God to give peace and happiness first to the world’s other nations and then to our tormented people,” he said.

“That’s what we will be praying for in the new temple.”

Kurds’ Peshmerga affiliated with Turkey Clash With Yazidi Militia in Western Iraq

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The so-called Rojava Peshmerga group attacked forces of the Yazidi Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) in the town of Knanesor, located in the western Iraqi Shingal district near the city of Mosul.

People of Shingal fought back, trying to stop the Rojava Peshmergas, the ANF media outlet reported on Friday, adding that the local Yazidi Peshmerga forces were fighting the attackers as well.

“As forces of the YBS-YJS [Shingal Women’s Resistance Units], we know very well what is the purpose of this attack and who are behind it. KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party] wants the YBS/YJS defeated and intends to drive them out of Shengal. However, KDP will never achieve this goal of theirs. We will not allow attacks, and we will not allow another massacre against our people,” YJS Commander Viyan Hebab said, as cited by the media.

The clashes have ceased partially, but the tension remains high, the media added.

Rojava Peshmerga group is a paramilitary wing of the Kurdish National Council, supported by the KDP. The group, reportedly of 5,000 fighters, is affiliated with Turkey which allegedly trained and funded the Rojava Pashmergas to fight against the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the biggest Kurdish party in Syria.

Shingal is a mainly Yazidi-populated district in the western Iraqi governorate of Nineveh. In August 2014, terrorists of Daesh (outlawed in Russia) managed to seize the town of Sinjar, defeating the Kurds and Yazidis. In December 2014, the Peshmerga-led offensive pushed Daesh forces out of the region.

Armenia: Sayid Avdalyan on the achievements and losses of #Yazidi community

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President of the Association of Young Yazidis of Armenia NGO Sayid Avdalyan#

“Yazidi community had more losses than achievements in this year,” President of the Association of Young Yazidis of Armenia NGO Sayid Avdalyan noted during today’s press conference when summarizing the year.

In his words the genocide against the Yazidis (Yezidis) of Shangal town which began in 2014 continues up to now, and as a result of the ISIS attacks over 25.000 Yezidis were murdered, numerous settlements of Yezidi communities became under their control and many sanctuaries were destroyed.

“According to the data provided by the UN 3500 Yezidi women and children are held captive as of now. And the destinies of those people are unknown as ISIS militants have sold them into slavery in different countries. More than half million Yazidis have become refugees,” Avdalyan noted.

He mentioned that many states, as well as international organizations reacted to the genocide against Yezidis, however those reactions remained only on the paper as no concrete steps are taken to stop the atrocities against those people. “Yazidis are not safe in Muslim-majority countries,” he added.

However he added that the Yazidi community has registered some achievements together with significant losses.  “On 1 April 2016 the first pan-Yezidi satellite TV channel launched in Russia. On 28 September the Yazidi organizations in Russia came together and established a joint organization called Yazidi Congress. During the Georgian parliamentary elections a Yazidi person was elected PM, and he will present the interests of the Yazidi people,” Sayid Avdalyan said.

He considered the liberation of a Yazidi neighbourhood located 20km near Mosul as one of the most important achievements of this year.

President of the Association of Young Yazidis of Armenia NGO added that in Yerevan and in Aknalich monuments dedicated to the memories of the Iraqi Yazidis genocide were opened.

 

Source Panorama.am

Amal Clooney says UN did nothing to help Yazidi sex slaves, asking women to help instead

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amal-cloony-unTEXAS,— After appearing before the United Nations for the first time and telling delegates she was “ashamed” to stand before them while they did nothing to prevent the rape and abuse of Kurdish Yazidi women, Amal Clooney stood before a conference of women and urged them to join the fight for women’s rights in countries where they are most under threat.

The renowned human rights lawyer gave the keynote speech at the Texas Conference for Women on Tuesday, where more than 100 leading women from different sectors also delivered talks.

In September, Clooney condemned world leaders for their inaction over the persecution of the Yazidi community, a religious minority in northern Iraq who have been targeted by Isis. In her speech on Tuesday, Clooney spoke more about the plight of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was trafficked by Isis as a sex slave and now advocates on behalf of Yazidi women.

“I want to talk to you today about what the fight for human rights means for one group of women who I represent,” Clooney began.

“When I addressed the UN Security Council earlier this year, I told them I was ashamed as a supporter of the United Nations that states are failing to punish genocide. I am ashamed that there is no justice being done and barely a complaint being made about it. More than that, I am ashamed as a woman that women like Nadia can today have their bodies sold and used like battlefields. I am ashamed as a human being that we ignore their cries for help.”

Murad was jointly awarded the Sakharov prize, the most prestigious human rights prize in Europe, alongside Lamiya Aji Bashar, who also escaped the terror group, in October. Now living in Germany, she visits refugee camps and speaks around Europe to raise awareness of the brutality inflicted upon her community.

Clooney went on: “One day in August 2014, Isis encircled her [Murad’s] village. Male adults in the family were rounded up and killed. Young boys were checked for signs of puberty. If they had hair under their arms, they were killed. The younger ones, like Nadia’s nephew Malik, were still young enough to be brainwashed. He was taken to an Isis camp, where he was being taught to kill.

“She was forced to pray and forced to dress up in preparation for rape. After she tried to escape from the first house where she was held, her owner invited all of the male guards in the compound to abuse her over the course of the night, two at a time, until she fell unconscious.

“They want to face their abusers in court and create a record of what’s happened to them, of the crimes they have suffered, so that they cannot later be denied.”

“Rape is a weapon of war,” she went on.

“As women, we share a bond, a shared experience. The experiences and struggles that only women go through. The worst thing that we can do as women is not stand up for each other. And this is something that we can practice every day no matter where we are or what we do. Because if we are united, there is no limit to what we can do.”

Islamic State group has captured most parts of the Yazidi Sinjar district in northwest Iraq on August 3, 2014 which led thousands of Kurdish families to flee to Mount Sinjar, where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis as well as rape and captivity of thousands of women.

Those who stay behind are subjected to brutal, genocidal acts: thousands killed, hundreds buried alive, and countless acts of rape, kidnapping and enslavement are perpetuated against Yazidi women. To add insult to injury, IS fighters ransack and destroy ancient Yazidi holy sites.

According to Human Rights organizations, thousands of Yazidi women and girls have been forced to marry or been sold into sexual slavery by the IS jihadists.

A Yazidi member of Iraqi parliament Vian Dakhil, said in August that 3,770 Kurdish Yazidi women and children still in Islamic State captivity.

The EU, US, UN and UK parliament recognize Islamic State killing of Yazidi Kurds as ‘Genocide’.