Yazidi Archives

ISIL has kidnapped 3,000 women, girls: Amnesty International

August 18, 2014 By administrator

Presstv Takfiri ISIL militants have kidnapped up to 3,000 women and girls from the Izadi community in northern Iraq over the past two weeks, Amnesty International says.

Donatella Rovera, the Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, said the kidnappings took place in villages east of Mount Sinjar, where people have taken up arms against the ISIL terrorists.

The ISIL militants launched attacks against Izadi Kurds on August 3, pushing thousands of people out of their villages near the country’s border with Syria. Survivors fled to Mount Sinjar, where they were besieged for several days.

She also stressed that the militants also kidnapped entire families in the region who could not manage to flee, adding the fate of thousands of abductees has remained uncertain.

“The victims are of all ages, from babies to elderly men and women,” she said.

The Amnesty official also pointed out that women and girl are being held separately from the men in Tal Afar area, which is under the control of the Takfiri militants.

She also voiced fear that the men “may have been executed,” and said the kidnapping is a “crime” under international law.

Some 200,000 people fled to safety in semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, while thousands others crossed the Syria border. A large number of others remain on the mountain.

Meanwhile, local Kurdish intelligence sources say they have received information that women captured by Takfiris are being sold to traffickers for between USD 500 and USD 43,000 to work in bordellos across the Middle East.

In addition, several women have reportedly been forced to marry the ISIL militants.

SAB/HJL/HRB

Armenian MFA: We are deeply concerned by violence faced by Iraqi Yazidis

August 16, 2014 By administrator

YEREVAN. – Armenian Foreign Ministry is deeply concerned by the violence faced by Iraqi Yazidis, spokesperson Tigran Balayan wrote on Twitter.

“We share the concerns of Yazidis living in Armenia. Armenian missions abroad have instructions to closely cooperate with stakeholders on Iraqi Yazidis issue,” he tweeted.

Hundreds of Yazidis marched in Yerevan on Thursday and handed over letters to Russian and French ambassadors as well as to UN office and earlier to the ambassador of U.S.

According to various sources, more than 5,000 people are killed in the town so far, and thousands of others have been displaced.

ISIS militants massacre 80 Yazidis, kidnap women in Iraqi village

August 15, 2014 By administrator

Some 80 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority have been massacred by Islamic State militants in a village in Iraq’s north, Kurdish officials said.

“They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,” senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. “We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed.”

In addition to the murders, local women were kidnapped from the village, another Kurdish official source told Reuters. A local Yazidi lawmaker confirmed the information.

According to BasNews, a Kurdish website, it was the Yazidi minority village of Kojo some 20 km south of Sinjar that came under attack by the Islamic State (former ISIS) radicals.

BasNews reports that around 80 men – the village’s whole male population – was slaughtered, while all the women were kidnapped.

The killings in the village lasted for about an hour, according to eyewitness reports, based on the testimony of Yazidi MP Mahama Khalil who spoke to survivors. Apparently, the massacre followed a five day ultimatum to convert to Islam or die.

“[An IS fighter] told me that the Islamic State had spent five days trying to persuade villagers to convert to Islam and that a long lecture was delivered about the subject today,” Reuters quotes a man from a neighbouring village as saying. “He then said the men were gathered and shot dead. The women and girls were probably taken to Tal Afar because that is where the foreign fighters are.”

Armenians of France to join protests by Kurds and Yazidis

August 15, 2014 By administrator

Co-ordination Council of Armenian organisations of France decided to support the call by Kurdish associations of France and the union of Yazidis of France to hold a demonstration against the crimes of the Islamic State of Iraq.

The protest action will be staged in Paris on August 16, Nouvelles d’Arménie reported.

The jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are carrying out pogroms and crimes against humanity, kidnapping and raping women, murdering children.

President Obama backs Iraqi prime minister nominee as U.S. arms Kurds against ISIS

August 12, 2014 By administrator

Speaking on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama threw his support behind a possible successor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is not bowing out — and raising fears of a possible coup. In a sign of how little faith the White House has in Iraq’s leaders in Baghdad, the U.S. is bypassing them and sending weaponry directly to the Kurds.

BY Dan Friedman , Corky Siemaszko

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Children from the minority Yazidi sect make their way toward the Syrian border on Monday.

President Obama tried to push Iraq’s power-hungry prime minister off the stage Monday — unreservedly throwing his support to a possible successor.

But a defiant Nouri al-Maliki gave no sign he was about to yield to American pressure, and special forces loyal to him continued to fan out across Baghdad — raising fears of a possible coup even as the government fights Islamic extremists in the north and west of the country.

The tense power struggle ratcheted up as tens of thousands of Iraqis from the Yazidi religious sect straggled into Syria after bloodthirsty ISIS fighters chased them into a barren mountain range a week ago.

The refugees, who spent days stranded in the highlands under a relentless sun with little food or water, came with harrowing stories of being driven from their homes.

Obama turned the screws on al-Maliki after Iraqi President Fouad Massoum gave the green light to the man he favors to form a new government, Haider al-Abadi.

“Today, Iraq took a promising step forward,” Obama said in brief remarks from Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on a working vacation. “The United States stands ready to support a government that addresses the needs and grievances of all Iraqi people.”

Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community cross the Iraqi-Syrian border along the Fishkhabur bridge over the Tigris River at the Fishkhabur crossing, in northern Iraq, on Monday.

Obama said Abadi, who like Maliki is a Shiite, could reach out to Iraq’s Sunni and Kurd minorities in a way Maliki has repeatedly failed to do.

“The only lasting solution is for Iraqis to come together and form an inclusive government,” Obama said.

In a speech broadcast Monday night, Maliki rejected the move to shove him out the door. He insisted Abadi’s nomination “runs against the constitutional procedures,” and he accused the U.S. of siding with political forces “who have violated the constitution.”

“We assure all the Iraqi people and the political groups that there is no importance or value to this nomination,” he added.

The prime minister lost U.S. backing after he refused to share power with minorities and installed his corrupt cronies in key posts.

Maliki also drew U.S. ire by doing little to stop the advance of ISIS, which is bent on carving out a caliphate in Iraq — and has staged mass murders of those it regards as infidels.

In his remarks, Obama reported U.S. air and drone strikes have stopped the murderous ISIS militants from capturing the key Kurdish city of Erbil.

But the President reiterated that “there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.”

Same-movie same-pictures Turkish massacre of Armenian and ISIS Yazidis massacre both using Islam as tools.

August 10, 2014 By administrator

Only Armenians understand the pain of the Yazidi, the only difference the Armenian massacre was at massive scale and it was by the Turkish government.

It’s an impossible question to answer. Then again, it’s difficult to fathom most anything thousands of minority Yazidis have endured in recent weeks as they’ve fled from ISIS militants into remote, rugged, sparse mountains of northern Iraq.

Now some of them are under siege or under fire, targeted by ISIS for not succumbing to demands to convert to Islam or else. Others, like Tariq, have managed to find some refuge in recent days, though worries remain about finding the resources they need to survive.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Sunni militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

“Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar,” Sudani said.

The minister’s comments could pile pressure on the United States – which has carried out air strikes on Islamic State targets in response to the group’s latest push through the north – to provide more extensive support.

“In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses,” said Sudani. “This is a vicious atrocity.”

at least now there is USA to come to call for help but in Armenian case when they ask the british for help the answer was our ships can not climb Mount Ararat.

Iraq Islamic State massacare 500 Yazidis, buried some victims alive

August 10, 2014 By administrator

By Ahmed Rasheed REUTERS / BAGHDAD

(Reuters) – Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq’s human rights minister told Reuters on Sunday.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Sunni militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Sudani said in a telephone interview, in his first remarks to the media on the issue.

Sinjar is the ancient home of the Yazidis, one of the towns captured by the Sunni militants who view the community as “devil worshipers” and tell them to convert to Islam or face death.

A deadline passed at midday on Sunday for 300 Yazidi families to convert to Islam or face death at the hands of the militants. It was not immediately clear whether the Iraqi minister was talking about the fate of those families or others in the conflict.

“Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar,” Sudani said.

ANCIENT RELIGION

The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, has prompted tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians to flee for their lives during their push to within a 30-minute drive of the Kurdish regional capital Arbil.

Earlier in their push through northern Iraq, Islamic State, which also considers all Shi’ites heretics who must repent or die, boasted of killing hundreds of captive Shi’ite soldiers after capturing the city of Tikrit on June 12. They put footage on the Internet of their fighters shooting prisoners.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country’s Kurdish minority.

Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein’s troops tried to crush the Kurds during his iron-fisted rule. Some were taken away by the executed former leader’s intelligence agents.

Now they are on the defensive again. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled for their lives after Kurdish fighters abandoned them in the face of Islamic State militants, and are trapped on a mountain near Sinjar at risk of starvation.

“We spoke to some of the Yazidis who fled from Sinjar. We have dozens of accounts and witness testimonies describing painful scenes of how Islamic State fighters arrived and took girls from their families by force to use them as slaves,” Sudani said.

“The terrorist Islamic State has also taken at least 300 Yazidi women as slaves and locked some of them inside a police station in Sinjar and transferred others to the town of Tal Afar. We are afraid they will take them outside the country.”

“The international community should submit to the fact that the atrocities of the Islamic State will not stop in Iraq and could be repeated somewhere else if no urgent measures were taken to neutralize this terrorist group,” Sudani said.

“It’s now the responsibility of the international community to take a firm stand against the Islamic State to reach a consensus on a legitimate decision to start the war on Islamic State to stop genocides and atrocities against civilians.”

The militant group, which arrived in northern Iraq in June, has routed Kurds in its latest advance, seizing several towns, a fifth oilfield and Iraq’s biggest dam – possibly gaining the ability to flood cities and cut off water and power supplies.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Alison Williams)

Baghdad: Watch Video: Yazidi lawmaker breaks down in parliament, save her community from massacre

August 7, 2014 By administrator

Vian Dakhil urges government and international community to save her community from massacre

Gulf News Report
Yazidi lawmaker Vian Dakhil breaks down in tears during a parliamentary session on Tuesday.
A Yazidi lawmaker broke down in tears during a parliamentary session on Tuesday as she urged the government and the international community to save her community from being massacred or starved into extinction.
“Over the past 48 hours, 30,000 families have been besieged in the Sinjar mountains, with no water and no food,” said Vian Dakhil.
“As we speak there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis. My family is being butchered,” she said. “My family is being butchered.”
Hundreds of people from Iraq’s Yazidi community have fled to Turkey after radical Islamists took over large swathes of territory in northern Iraq, Turkish officials said on Thursday.

An attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) at the weekend sparked a mass exodus from the northern part of Iraq including the town of Sinjar, where most of the population is made up of the Yazidi minority.
“Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets. Please save us, Save us,” said the MP on Tuesday. “We are being slaughtered; our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. I am begging you, in the name of humanity.”
Humanitarian agencies said between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar, the Washington Post reported, adding that many had started dying of thirst.