Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Nobody Helps Us

Shame Dero lost five of her ten children to the Islamic State group (ISIS). Every year, on August 3rd, in commemoration of the genocide anniversary, she prepares food for the children of Chamishko camp in Duhok where she lives, remembering the hunger she and other Yazidis felt as they fled the terror group’s attack on Shingal

“We are doing this for the sake of God and for the souls of those whose flesh was eaten in the desert. Trust me, I consider them my own children. All of our children were loved ones. There were students, doctors, teachers, academicians, and soldiers among them. They were all starving. They had no food.

I swear to God, none of them has been buried. None of the injured was taken to the hospital... When I prepare the food, I prepare it as if my children are alive and I am feeding them. With this food donation, I ease my sorrows.” Dero said in an interview with Rudaw’s Jaffar Mubashirnya on Tuesday.

On 3 August, 2014, ISIS militants took over the town of Shingal, committing genocide against the Yazidi minority. Thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter on Mount Sinjar, then later in camps in the Kurdistan Region or abroad.

Militants systematically killed men and older women, and enslaved younger women and children. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. Today, around 3,000 people are still missing, according to statistics from the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan.

“In front of our daughters-in-law, they beheaded our grandchildren. Our children's flesh is cut into pieces. Isn't that a crime?” asked Dero.

“Thirty-three relatives of my family were victimized and enslaved by ISIS. Thirteen of them were killed. One of my sons survived after being injured. He was shot twice in the leg and needs special care,” said Dero.

Their bodies are still lying where they fell, and Dero is worried they have been burned after a series of fires reported at some mass grave sites. “We also ask to collect the bones of our loved ones in Tal Ozer that have become ashes as they have been burned. Let everyone know I have been looking for their bones for seven years,” she said.

Only 18 of her family members survived. Five of her sons are dead. One of her granddaughters, Jaylan, killed herself, slitting her wrists, rather than be gang raped by ISIS militants.

For seven years Dero has lived in a camp, where she says they are in constant fear of fire, like the one that tore through Sharya camp in June, turning some 400 tents to ash.

“We live in a dire situation under the tents. We're not sure when we will be engulfed in flames,” she said, appealing for assistance to build a permanent home.

Due to the dire situation in the camp, Dero refuses to return home, afraid for her safety in a region where scores of militias are active and the government has failed to implement an agreement to restore safety and rebuild Shingal. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Monday acknowledged that not enough has been done for the Yazidis.

“How can we return home? There is no place we can go,” said Dero. “We have no life left in this world, believe me. I don't know where to go

Seven of her children’s houses have been destroyed. “From a needle to the well pumps and doors, nothing is left in the houses. They were set ablaze, but the concrete walls did not catch fire. All that's left is the empty building,” she said.

ISIS was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and two years later in Syria. When the last bastion of the group fell in 2019, thousands of the group’s fighters, family members, and supporters were detained in prisons and camps in northeast Syria. It is believed that many of the missing Yazidis are among the ISIS families in al-Hol camp.

Dero says she knows she has family there. “We have been searching for our missing people. We know they're in al-Hol camp in Syria. We know that one of my daughters-in-law and her son are in al-Hol camp,” she said.

Al-Hol camp houses nearly 60,000 people affiliated with ISIS and Syrian Kurdish forces struggle to secure the sprawling site, which has been dubbed a breeding ground for terrorism.

Dero said she is ready to dress in a black niqab like the women of ISIS and search al-Hol for her family members. “Nobody helps us. We are a flock of sheep without a shepherd. We don’t have a leader. If we had one, two jets would have protected us on that day. Nothing would have happened to the Yazidis. We would have not lost even two of our children,” she said.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/03082021

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

This Facebook Group is about the plight of the Ezidi (Yazidi) people. They have been persecuted for far to long. They only want to live in Peace and Freedom from those who wish to destroy them

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2037301639843952/about

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

Still going through hell

For seven years, their families waited and hoped for news. In July, they finally received it. Two young women, kidnapped by Islamic State as teenagers, had been found alive in Syria

Salma*, now 25, was located in Deir el-Zour province, in the east of the country. She had “suffered all kinds of injustice”, said the Yazidi House in the Al-Jazira region, an organisation that assisted with the rescue of both women.

Dareen*, abducted from Sinjar – the Yazidis’ homeland in northern Iraq – when she was just 14, was rescued a week later, according to the Yazidi House.

The women rejoin their community as it marks the seventh anniversary of the genocide inflicted on it. In August 2014 Isis attacked Sinjar, killing thousands and abducting and enslaving more than 6,000 women and children.

The release of the women lends credence to reports that, although many are thought to have died in fighting or in captivity, a number of the 3,000 Yazidis missing may still be alive.

In May a social media campaign in Iraq demanded the Iraqi government do more to find missing Yazidi women.

The Yazidi House said that Salma had been moved around Syria before ending up in Deir el-Zour. This chimes with reports that, as Isis fell in 2019, while some women and children were able to escape, others were trafficked further into Syria, and to Turkey.

Some may also be living with ISIS-affiliated families in Iraq. Another Yazidi woman was found in Baghdad in July, according to Háwar.help, a charity working with the community.

“A real, national programme to search for the women and children is unfortunately still missing,” says Yazidi activist Mirza Dinnayi, director of humanitarian organisation Air Bridge Iraq. There are still “only private initiatives that try to help, mainly from the families and some people who can help them”.

Photographs of Yazidis killed in 2014 by Isis militants at the Lalish temple, above the town of Shekhan



Abdullah Shrem, 46, is one such person. In 2014 the former honey seller, whose story is recounted in The Beekeeper of Sinjar by Dunya Mikhail, drew on his trade contacts to build a network of informants in Syria to rescue the kidnapped Yazidis. His first case was his niece, one of 56 family members taken by ISIS, and he has since helped to rescue hundreds of people.

Shrem says that since ISIS lost its territory, the missing people have become increasingly scattered, so finding them is more difficult. He knows of women held in Idlib and northern Aleppo province in Syria, he says. However, coordinating rescue operations across borders without logistical support from authorities is problematic. “One person without official backing is powerless,” he says.

“What makes it even more complicated is when these areas where the missing persons are, are beyond government control, such as in some parts of Syria,” says Alexander Hug, who heads the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in Iraq, working with the authorities to embed an approach based on the rule of law.

According to Pari Ibrahim, founder of the Free Yezidi Foundation, there have been reports of missing Yazidis in al-Hawl detention camp in Syria, which houses more than 60,000 people, mostly women, some of whom remain ISIS supporters, and children. She acknowledges the difficulty of searching across the territories of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, but thinks efforts should “at least start with that camp”.

Access to the camp and identifying people is difficult, while some of the women do not want to return to their community, as it would mean giving up their children. Yazidi religious leaders have decreed that children fathered by Muslim ISIS fighters are not welcome.

Ibrahim says it’s important such women know that “there are organisations who will leave their door open to help you”. “Yazidi women and children are afraid,” she says.

She wants more international assistance in tracking down the missing. “Where’s the outcry for those who don’t have a voice?” asks Ibrahim.

“People like to talk about these kinds of things in formal settings,” she says, “but come into the real world: who is going to help to identify where these women are? How are we going to help them get back, because they are still going through hell after seven years?”

Dinnayi hopes that greater efforts will be made following the recent passing in Iraq of the Law on Yazidi Survivors – providing for the creation of a directorate that, alongside the distribution of reparations, would cover the search for the missing – but further details are yet to be released.

After years of conflict and human rights abuses, large numbers of people are missing across Iraq, with official estimates ranging between 250,000 and one million

However, efforts to locate missing people are carried out in an uncoordinated, ad hoc way, according to a March report from the ICMP.

“If governments would centralise the missing persons file, including the data, then that would increase the efficiency of identifying missing persons,” says Hug.

He emphasises the importance of DNA testing. With people spread across administrative boundaries and borders – as the Yazidis often are, with many still living in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, and others having left Iraq altogether – obtaining DNA samples from families to identify the missing becomes harder.

The ICMP, along with other international organisations, including Unitad (the UN team investigating Isis crimes), is also supporting the Iraqi government in the excavation of mass graves, including some in Sinjar. Earlier this year, 104 men from Kocho, the site of some of ISIS’s worst atrocities, were laid to rest in their village after DNA identification.

Yesim Arikut-Treece, the Free Yezidi Foundation’s clinical psychologist, says the fact that the families now have a grave to visit and “they have done all the necessary rituals for their souls”, makes a real difference.

There are dozens of mass graves in Sinjar yet to be exhumed, and the fate of thousands is still unknown to their families. “Until they know for sure, they cannot start the grieving process,” Arikut-Treece says. “It’s like a wound that festers.”

She recalls one woman she worked with whose brother and sister were still missing six years after the genocide. “She had children, her husband … a lot of valuable things in her life, but she was unable to get on with her life because of the guilt. You know, I am here, where are my siblings? What happened to them?”

She was still wearing her mourning headscarf, long past the customary period and would not attend weddings or festivities. Arikut-Treece says her grief was “unending”.

For Shrem, 42 of his relatives have returned but 14 are still missing. It is why he won’t return to his village in Sinjar. “I have no courage to live there with all the sad memories of my brother and sisters.”

For the two women found in July and their families, there is now some relief. Salma has been reunited with her relatives in Sinjar, ending an absence of seven years. Dareen is waiting to return.

“There’s always a gap in our people’s hearts,” Ibrahim says. “And there’s no way to fill that.” But she also has hope. “I hear of stories of Yazidi women surviving, and women that we treat are surviving. I want to stay optimistic. Because through optimism, we create a voice that never dies, even if the missing are unable to speak.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... n-years-on

[Anthea]

Click to enlarge photo of Sinjar:


Slowly not surely

Reconstruction in the Yazidi heartland is being hampered by administrative and security uncertainty

On the seven-year anniversary of the genocide at the hands of the Islamic State group (ISIS), Farhad Barkat, a Yazidi activist and translator, is posting on Twitter in memory of the thousands who died during this time.

The northwestern Iraqi town of Sinjar and its surrounding areas, where Farhad lives and works, was the epicenter of the Yazidi genocide. Sinjar, called Shingal in Kurdish, made international headlines when what would be widely recognised as a genocide began, but has since fallen off the radar.

Sharing glimmers of hope, Farhad posts photos of sunlight bouncing off of black tarmac of new roads, and new schools with gleaming windows.

However, much of Sinjar is still in ruins. Houses lie bombed out, mines remain hidden waiting in rubble, and water supplies have been left dry, so that hundreds of thousands of Yazidis - many of them still living in IDP camp tents - are not returning to their ancestral homeland.

"The process of reconstruction is so quiet. If it is done like this, then it will take dozens of years," Farhad told The New Arab.

After clearing debris, repaving, and installing road signs, #Sinuni’s main road is ready for traffic! Now, it’s time for the finishing touches: building sidewalks and planting trees along the road.#USCGERBIL

Nadia's Initiative
USAID Iraq
USAID Middle East
USAID ICRI-Ta'afi pic.twitter.com/KwNg85I9eD
— Farhad Barkat (@farhadbarkat0) July 27, 2021

ISIS began to tear through the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar on 3 August 2014. Thousands were abducted, with many women and girls enduring sexual violence at the hands of ISIS captors. Yazidis are heretics, ISIS said, so anything could be done to them.

After years of fierce fighting between ISIS on the one side and local forces and the US-led Coalition on the other, the extremist group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in December 2017. ISIS left horror in its wake - nowhere more so than in Sinjar. At the last count about 3,000 Yazidis were still missing, and more than 200,000 remain displaced.

Pari Ibrahim is executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation (FYF), a non-governmental organisation that works with Yazidis living in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. FYF holds a seminar on what can be done for the Yazidi every year on 3 August, "as the impact of the Yazidi Genocide remains", Ibrahim told The New Arab.

"Yazidis are now largely in recovery and rebuilding mode, but this is also not easy. Homes are destroyed, there are few jobs, immense individual and community-wide trauma, and many Yazidis are still missing. So even though there is not an active war, the community still faces many grave challenges," Ibrahim said.

Some advances have been made this year on getting recognition for the Yazidi genocide, most notably the passing of the Yazidi Survivors' Law in March of this year. The law means that Iraq recognises what happened to the Yazidis was a genocide. It promises victims psychological and medical care, compensation, housing, jobs, and education to female victims of captivity.

Baghdad has yet to implement the bill, or other promises it made to the Yazidis, including reconstruction in Sinjar. Local and international NGOs are working hard to breathe life back into the area, but they say they cannot do it alone.

Many of the Yazidis displaced in Iraq are living in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. Canvas tents do little to protect against cold, wet winters and sweltering summers. Job opportunities are scarce, and a mental health crisis is gripping the displaced.

At the end of last year, the Iraqi government began to push for the closing of camps across Iraq, including Iraqi Kurdistan, because of poor safety - including the fire that ripped through hundreds of tents at Sharia camp in Dohuk province. The authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan have broadly refused to shut the camps.

Some Yazidi families have left the camps to return to Sinjar for good, but some moved back to the camps as soon as they could because of the poor living conditions in Sinjar. Others have sought refuge abroad, feeling that there is no future for them in Iraq.

"Those who have returned to their areas of origin and those who are intending to do so are in need of education, healthcare, housing, clean water, job opportunities, legal aid, and mental healthcare," said Abid Shamdeen, executive director for Nadia’s Initiative, founded by Yazidi Genocide survivor and human rights advocate Nadia Murad.

"These needs are compounded by a lack of local governance and social support services."

Sinjar, a territory claimed by both the federal and Iraqi Kurdish authorities, is home to several armed groups vying for control.

In October 2020, Erbil and Baghdad reached an agreement so that the only arms in the Sinjar area would be those of the federal government. As part of the agreement, 2,500 local people are to be hired to form a security force. Little of the deal has materialised.

"Yazidis continue to suffer from poor local governance in the region and a lack of integration of the community into the local police forces and federal security forces," Shamdeen told The New Arab.

"The only way Yazidis will be able to ensure both their safety and security in the long-term is if they are empowered to participate in both institutions… restoring the Yazidi community's agency means enabling them to have a say in their own governance and security."

To make matters even more complicated, Sinjar currently has not one, but two local governments: one appointed by authorities and located in Sinjar; the other is being led by the mayor elected by the provisional council, who works in exile from Dohuk. The agreement says that Erbil and Baghdad must decide on an independent mayor.

The uncertainty around the administration and security has meant efforts to rebuild the area are taking place in slow motion.

"For Nadia’s Initiative and many other INGOs/NGOs working in the region, having the Sinjar mayor based in Sinjar and having functioning government offices would make implementing projects a lot easier," Shamdeen said.

For Ibrahim, "reliable, professional security in Sinjar" is among the most important factors for reconstruction in the short and short-medium term.

Sinjar is part of Nineveh province, which is rich in religious and ethnic minority groups, all of which were targeted and left obliterated by ISIS. The province has suffered from wide-scale corruption in recent years, with former governor Nawfal Al-Akoub arrested and jailed for embezzling tens of millions of dollars from state coffers.

But Nineveh's current governor, Najm Al-Jubouri, in April decried the amount of money allocated to the province in the 2021 federal budget, saying it was insufficient for reconstruction.

Yazidis say that what happened in 2014 was one of 74 genocides they have survived. Some say the genocide is ongoing, because of the unknown fate of those still missing. For a people who have suffered so much, the reconstruction of their ruined homeland might be able to restore a little of their faith in the future.

"The reconstruction of Sinjar would give the people confidence in a better future, which is very important for coping with the trauma and genocide," Dr. Jan Kizilhan, a Yazidi psychologist who has worked with survivors of the genocide told The New Arab.

"Reconstruction of Sinjar also means that the injured roots get a chance to grow again, which psychologically means that it can help heal the traumatic wounds. In this way, a broken community can grow again in the hope of peace and security and hopefully reconciliation with its Muslim and Arab neighbours."

For Shamdeen, "the only way to end the genocide against the Yazidi people is to facilitate their safe and dignified return home to Sinjar".

Shahla Omar is a staff journalist at The New Arab. Follow her on Twitter: @shahlasomar

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/sinj ... i-genocide

[Anthea]

Yazidi women rescued after 7 years

KHANKE CAMP, Kurdistan Region — Sipan Khalil buries her face in the shoulder of a relative as they hold each other tight, smiling through tears. After seven years in Islamic State (ISIS) captivity, Sipan is finally safe, in the loving embrace of her family

On 3 August 2014, ISIS militants took over the Shingal district of northern Iraq, committing genocide against the Yazidi minority. Thousands fled their homes as the militants systematically killed men and older women, and enslaved younger women and children. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted.

Today about 3,000 Yazidis are still missing, according to statistics from the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan. Many are believed to be held by ISIS fighters and families who melted back into their former lives when their so-called caliphate fell or are detained in camps in Western Kurdistan (Rojava Kurdistani)

Recently, two other women were rescued.

Sipan was 15 when she was captured. This week, her seven-year-long nightmare ended and she was reunited with her family.

“There was food deprivation and torture. We used to be locked in rooms and beaten up. Our condition was similar to that of the dead. There was no life at all, as if we were dead,” she said.

The militants called her Baqiyah – Arabic for eternity. She understands Kurdish, but can no longer speak it. She and her relatives chat and laugh as they do her nails and her hair.

In 2019, when ISIS was defeated in their last Syrian stronghold of Baghouz, Sipan’s captor took her with him when he hid, first to the nearby town of Hajin, Deir ez-Zor province, and then to Daraa in southern Syria. Three months ago, he tried to take Sipan across the border to Lebanon, but he was killed during the journey. She said there was an explosion.

After he was dead, Sipan was finally able to make contact with her family.

“She contacted us two months ago. She’d got our phone number. We then were trying to find her with the Yazidi House. The Yazidi House went to Daraa and did the paperwork to bring her back,” said Sipan’s brother Bahjat Khalil.

Yazidi House is an aid organization based in Western Kurdistan. Working with Kurdish security forces, they have rescued 410 Yazidi women.

“Shingal women and their children can be found in all parts of Syria. Last week, we rescued a woman in the Daraa area,” said Farouq Tozo, co-chair of Yazidi House.

In their house in Hasaka is Zere Mito Shivan, another woman who was recently rescued. The 25-year-old was found two weeks ago in a village, in Deir ez-Zor province.

After ISIS was defeated in Baghouz, Zere’s captor took her and his family to his home village Chihail. The village was under control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led force allied with the US-led global coalition against ISIS. She was close to freedom, but lived there imprisoned for two years with no access to a phone.

“We’ve actually seen a lot of miseries. We used to be imprisoned. We were beaten up if we disobeyed them. They used to beat us with their hands, cables, sticks and iron sticks. They used to hit our heads against the walls. It was very painful,” she said.

She was rescued in a raid by Kurdish security forces on July 19 and is now waiting to return to her family in Shingal.

Sipan and her family were reunited on Tuesday in Khanke camp, Duhok where some of her relatives are living. Thousands of Yazidis are still living in camps, unable to return to their homes because of lack of reconstruction, services, and security.

All 12 members of Sipan’s family were abducted or missing under ISIS. Her father and brother are still unaccounted for and her mother and four siblings have moved to Germany.

“We are now back, thanks be to God. I've now started a new chapter in my life. Now that I can stand on my own, I’m so happy. Even though I’m surrounded by my family, I cannot celebrate this happiness because my father and brother are still missing,” she said.

Link to Article - Video:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/050820212

[Anthea]

Turkish court freed 3 ISIS members

A Turkish court released from pretrial detention three alleged members of the Islamic State who were accused of kidnapping a 7-year-old Yazidi girl and trying to sell her online, Turkish Minute reported, citing the Gazete Duvar news website

The alleged ISIS members reportedly tried to sell the girl at an online slave market used by ISIS. She was rescued from captivity in Ankara on Feb. 24 and was placed under state protection.

In an indictment accepted by the Ankara court in March, the three defendants were accused of membership in ISIS and serving in the leadership of the radical group in addition to kidnapping charges.

The Ankara court released two of the defendants known as Anas V. and Nasır H.R. on judicial probation in late February, while the third defendant, known as Sabah A.H.O., was released under similar measures in June.

The defendants, who are all Iraqi nationals, will appear before the court on Oct. 5 for their next hearing.

In the meantime, a diplomat at the Iraqi Embassy in Ankara told the news outlet that the embassy did its best to reunite the girl with her family but has been unable to reach them. The diplomat said the girl’s family is believed to have been killed in a massacre perpetrated by ISIS in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq.

Starting in 2014, ISIS carried out a massacre of Yazidis who were living in Sinjar, killing Yazidi men and forcing Yazidi women into sexual slavery. Many Yazidis had to leave their homeland in Upper Mesopotamia. Some 5,000 Yazidis were reportedly killed during the massacre.

[Anthea]

Yazidis still suffering

The Yazidis in Iraq are still suffering from the repercussions of ISIS crimes, a Yazidi activist says

On 3 August 2014, ISIS militants attacked and took over Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled town that was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis.

“On the 3rd of August 2014, the Yazidi regions and villages in Iraq were subjected to the most heinous massacre, abuse, kidnapping, mass and individual killing, chases, theft, land confiscation, crop burning, house demolitions, selling of women and children, killing of men and youth, and brainwashing of teenagers to change their religion and their ideas,” Murad Yazidi tells the Tehran Times.

“All this and more have been exercised against the Yazidis systematically, some crimes of which are still continuing, as more than 3,000 children and women are still missing or held in the terrorist camps,” the Yazidi activist adds.

Yazidis, an ethnoreligious minority group of about 550,000 people, mostly reside in northern Iraq, an area also populated by Kurds and Arabs.

ISIS regards the Yazidis as “devil worshippers” who must either renounce their religious views or die.

According to international organizations, ISIS was responsible for the killing and abduction of roughly 9,900 Yazidis and destroying 68 Yazidi shrines in 2014.

When the terrorist group entered the Yazidi ancestral city of Sinjar on Aug. 3, 2014, they murdered roughly 5,000 men and boys and enslaved thousands of women and children.
Following is the text of the interview:

Q: What is the meaning of the word Yazidi? Is it true that the beliefs of this sect are descended from ancient Persian religions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism? Is there a common ritual between Yazidism and Zoroastrianism?

A: The word "Yazidi" in our language means “servants of God”. “Izady” means the one who created me.

It is a monotheistic, non-missionary religion that believes in one God and only God. Its roots return to the Indo-European religions and are not one of the ancient Persian religions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, as is rumored.

Although there are commonalities between Yazidism and Zoroastrianism, they are two separate religions since ancient times. There are sources confirming the seniority of the Yazidi religion, because it is considered a doctrine that crystallized and developed without a prophet or messenger that extends to the Sumerian and Babylonian eras, with evidence that most of its religious rituals are linked to nature and its sanctification.

However, the Yazidis consider Sheikh Adi (Sheikh Uday bin Musafir) the founder of their religion, neither a messenger nor a prophet.

Q: What are the main strongholds of the Yazidis in West Asia before and after the ISIS advent?

A: Some reports indicate that the original Yazidi population was in Turkey until the Ottomans came to power and began to expel and exterminate them, which led to reducing their numbers from millions to a few thousand.

A large number of them migrated to the former Soviet Union republics, and others to Iraq, which is so far considered their “largest and oldest home.”

There are some Yazidis in Syria, Georgia, Armenia and Russia. Recently, the number of Yazidis has increased dramatically in the European Union especially in Germany, which has more than 150,000 Yazidis. They are also present in America, Australia and Canada.

It is certain that the number of Yazidis has decreased in Iraq and Syria after the genocide they were subjected to at the hands of ISIS, while it has increased in Western countries and Europe by nearly a hundred thousand since August 2014.

Q: Can you update us about crimes ISIS committed against the Yazidis in Iraq and Syria?

A: On the 3rd of August 2014, the Yazidi regions and villages in Iraq were subjected to the most heinous massacre, abuse, kidnapping, mass and individual killing, chases, theft, land confiscation, crop burning, house demolitions, selling of women and children, killing of men and youth, and brainwashing of teenagers to change their religion and their ideas.

All this and more have been exercised against the Yazidis systematically, some crimes of which are still continuing, as more than 3,000 children and women are still missing or held in the terrorist camps.

ISIS as a terrorist organization followed the same approach as the elements of al-Qaeda did, where they killed the Yezidis on identity according to their false attitudes, considering the Yezidis as infidels or devil-worshippers.

This was a false accusation made by extremists for decades with the aim of seizing peoples’ lands and properties.

Q: How do you see Iran's efforts to support the Yazidis, especially during the ISIS invasion?

A: Actually, there was no special support for the Yazidis from Tehran but the Iranian government stood with the Iraqi defense forces to liberate many Iraqi lands from the cowardly ISIS, so this support was not only for the Yazidis.

Unfortunately, today the Yazidi regions have become an arena for political struggles between Iraqi groups after their liberation from ISIS.

Q: How do you see the performance of the international community in shedding light on what happened to the Yazidis?

A: I can say that the international community as a whole promised more than it contributed regarding support for the Yazidis and the Yazidi cause, but there are some European countries whose positions were honorable towards our humanitarian cause.

On the other hand, we are stunned by the silence of Arab and Islamic countries regarding support for the Yazidi cause, as it is a humanitarian issue that should be supported by all governments without exception.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/463819 ... mes-Yazidi

[Anthea]

The lie of Satan worship
Dr. Mahdi Kakei

Since the creation, the human beings have created the "devil" with different names

People were afraid of the natural phenomena that threatened their lives, such as darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, lightning, thunder, winter cruelty, predatory wild animals, sickness, hunger, death, etc. Therefore, they made gods for these phenomena; giving them offers in order the gods would be kind with them, to keep them away from their evils and dangers.

Human beings created for themselves good gods representing positive phenomena, such as light, fertility, spring, agriculture, water and harvest the crop and other things that would benefit them. They regarded these gods, made holidays for the good gods, set up festivals for them and welcomed them and their arrival.

In the course of time, human beings continued to adhere to the God of Good and the God of Evil. Zoroaster made (Ahuramazda) as the creator, the sole God and the good god, and (Ahriman) as the destructive spirit.

The Jews continued in this manner, which was quoted by Christians and Muslims. The believers of the religion of Yazdanism have disobeyed this rule and believed in a single Creator, who is the absolute good, light and love. The God is loved by human being and in turn he loves the human beings.

In Yazdanism, there is no threat from the Creator to burn and torture the human beings. How does the Creator submit to the torture and burning of his daughters and sons?!

The human beings, in turn do not disobey the Creator, not because of fearing of him, but it is due to their love for him. Therefore, the believers of Yazdanism are happy in their lives, where they do not live with the horror of torture and burning after death, but there is no death in the Yazdanism religion.

After the death, the human being’s spirit will move to another new body of a person and continues his/her life. This phenomenon is called “change of shirt” in the Yazidism; it is like a change of clothes. This phenomenon is called “Donawdon” in Yarsanism, which means “the move of the human being’s soul from one stage to another one”. The Yarsani believers say that the death of the human being is like the floating of the duck, diving in the water here and coming up there.

The Yazidism is a branch of the Yazdani religion, and therefore the Yazidis not only do not worship the devil, but the devil does not exist in their religion

Reason and logic reject the creation of the devil and his disobedience to the Creator because “Satan“ is the creature of God, incapable of disobeying His Creator. The Creator does not create Evil to hurt the human beings and to urge them to disobey the Creator and commit criminal and evil acts because the Creator loves his creatures, does not want evil for them and he gives them the mind to be free in their choices during their lives, whether good or bad.

Some religions invented “Satan” to create paradise and hell and to intimidate those who disobey the Creator's orders. At that time, powerful governments did not exist, enacting laws to deter man from doing bad deeds. In the Yazidi religion, the Creator is the absolute good and human beings have given reason to choose the nature and style of their lives. Therefore, in the Yezidi religion, Satan is that human being who chooses the path of evil and commits crimes.

In the era of Zoroastrianism and in the Sassanid era, when the religion of Zoroastrianism was adopted as the official religion of the Sasanian state, the people of the Yazdani religion were exterminated and continued to be accused of worshiping (Ahriman “Satan”). Yazidism, Alavism and Yarsanism are the three main religions that belong to Yazdanism.

The lie of worshiping (Ahriman “Satan”) by Yazidis was transferred from the Sassanians, and spread among the peoples of the region and therefore this accusation of the Yazidis continued by Christians and Muslims as well.

In modern history, in the mid-1940s, Father Anastas Karamli played a major role in accusing Yazidis for worshiping Satan, followed by the Iraqi historian Abdul Razzaq al-Hasani. Since then, their accusation has been widely spread among the people of the area.

If we compare the story of the creation of the universe in the religions of Yazidism, Alavism and Yarsanism, with that of the Sumerians, we find that they are very similar. Thus, the beliefs of the branches of the Yazdanism religion are an extension of the Sumerian beliefs that prevailed more than five thousand years ago.

[Anthea]

European action against ISIS fighters

Seven years on from the genocide that killed thousands of Yazidi people in northern Iraq, European countries are grappling with how to prosecute those responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century

In early August 2014 in Sinjar province, members of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group began murdering men who refused to convert to Islam and leaving their bodies in unmarked mass graves, according to the United Nations.

"Thousands were killed pursuant to this ultimatum, either executed en masse, shot as they fled, or dying from exposure on Mount Sinjar as they tried to escape," said Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, head of a UN team probing ISIS crimes.

"Thousands more were enslaved, with women and children abducted from their families and subjected to the most brutal abuses, including serial rape and other forms of unendurable sexual violence. For many, this abuse lasted years, often leading to death."

An estimated 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved and forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq and eastern Syria. Held in sexual slavery, survivors reported being repeatedly sold, gifted, or passed around among ISIS fighters. Young Yazidi boys, meanwhile, were forced to join ISIS as child soldiers.

Why bringing people to justice has been difficult

Despite clear evidence of ISIS’s role in these atrocities, prosecuting those responsible has not been straightforward. No international or regional court has been established and former ISIS members responsible for crimes against Yazidis remain detained in Iraq and Kurdish-controlled Syria in conditions that have been criticised by human rights NGOs.

As Syria remains war-torn and largely under the control of Bashir Al-Assad, there is little likelihood of justice being delivered through courts there. While Iraqi courts have prosecuted thousands of former ISIS militants, it has been predominantly based on membership of the terrorist group rather than the specific crimes committed against the Yazidis.

“The legal process in Iraq is not transparent. Survivors don't even know if it's happening, and they're not involved,” says Abid Shamdeen, the director of Nadia’s Initiative, the NGO founded by the Nobel prize winner Nadia Murad that advocates for survivors of sexual violence.

“There were also many European and US nationals who participated to a certain degree in the attacks against the Yazidi people,” notes Shamdeen, “and there are no ways that the Iraqi courts will be able to prosecute them.”

How much were Europeans involved in the genocide?

It has been well-documented that many European nationals travelled from Europe to join ISIS, while other ISIS members were able to obtain refuge after the collapse of the so-called caliphate.

To date, proceedings in France, Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands have been issued against ISIS or other extremist militants on terrorism charges.

Germany has been leading the way in prosecuting ISIS members for specific crimes committed against Yazidis.

More than 1,200 German citizens are estimated to have joined ISIS, including ‘Sarah O.’ who travelled from Germany to Syria in 2013 to join the terror group. In Syria, she married ‘Ismail S’, another German national who remains wanted by authorities in Germany.

Over a two-year period from 2015-2017, the couple bought and enslaved seven Yazidi women and girls. The Yazidis were abused by the couple and one 14-year-old girl died while in captivity.

In June 2021, a German court convicted Sarah O. of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation i.e. ISIS, assault, deprivation of liberty, aiding and abetting rape, enslavement and religious and gender-based persecution as crimes against humanity.

The importance of religious and gender-based persecution charges

The conviction for religious and gender-based persecution is “crucial as Yazidis are often perceived as one homogenous group in these cases,” said Alexandra Lily Kather, an international criminal justice consultant and visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London.

“The communities were separated by ISIS according to age and to gender and according to the subgroups different crimes were committed: the men and elderly women were shot; the young women and girls were subject to sexual enslavement but also domestic servitude, and Yazidi boys were also enslaved and forcibly conscripted to ISIS.”

However, so far, most prosecutions of ISIS militants have focused on their membership of ISIS, rather than specific war crimes.

“It is a much more complex case to prove that a person committed a criminal act than to prove that the person was a member of an organisation,” said Nerma Jelacic, the director for external relations at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CJIA). The international NGO gathers evidence in conflict zones for prosecutions in domestic and international criminal courts.

“It is crucial that the severity and context of criminal conduct and involvement of the suspects is reflected in the crimes investigated and prosecuted,” said Kather.

“In the context of crimes committed against the Yazidi by ISIS, these should be genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, alongside terrorism charges, because ultimately such trials will contribute to the historical record and be a reference for survivors in their call for reparations and redress."

“Each survivor deserves to see their abuser held accountable and their suffering acknowledged in a court of law,” said Nadia Murad in a statement following the conviction of Omaima A. for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg on 26 July 2021.

The German woman was found to have assisted the enslavement of two Yazidi women who were kidnapped from Sinjar.

Legal and political reasons drive Germany’s involvement in ISIS prosecutions

Germany has led the way in the prosecution of ISIS crimes for several reasons.

The German federal prosecutor and federal police force have specialised units for investigating and prosecuting war crimes. There was also political support for the Yazidi community at a regional level as reports of ISIS atrocities emerged in 2014. In March 2015, the state of Baden Württemberg began a relocation program for vulnerable women and girls in Northern Iraq. In a relatively short amount of time, there were over 1,000 Yazidi women and girls living there.

“A lot of survivors were in close proximity to the German prosecutor’s office, which was able to interview over a hundred survivors and record their testimony,” says Kather.

The country is also one of the few countries which has true universal jurisdiction to prosecute international crimes including genocide, torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and enforced disappearances. Due to the gravity of the crimes, the German Code of Crimes against International Law allows German authorities to investigate and prosecute cases where neither the victim nor the perpetrator is German and where the crime was committed outside of Germany.

In the Taha Al-J case which is ongoing in the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt, the German authorities were also able to issue an international arrest warrant and request the extradition of an Iraqi national from Greece based on the evidence they had gathered as part of their case against his wife, ‘Jennifer W,’ who is a German national.

“This essential extradition and the following trial are a testament to the long arm of universal jurisdiction and how it can cut across political interests,” says Kather.

Collecting and gathering evidence

A key challenge for universal jurisdiction trials lies in the collection and preservation of field evidence, specifically from Sinjar in Iraq where the Yazidi genocide was predominantly committed.

Since 2016, the CJIA has been providing evidence that it gathered in Iraq and Syria to EU states, as well as other democratic states who don’t use the death penalty, for the prosecution of members of ISIS and the Syrian regime in national courts.

Gathering evidence of the crimes committed against Yazidis, particularly against the women, has been challenging. Jelacic says that it was difficult to find victims who could provide testimony in a courtroom, as many had been repeatedly interviewed by journalists and NGOs. CJIA does not take statements from victims who have already spoken to the media.

“We don't want to re-traumatise them by asking them to retell their story, but we also want to protect their testimony,” says Jelacic. “Every time the person tells their story, small differences will start creeping in. Then, when they are in the courtroom, the defence will highlight them - you don't want to put a survivor through that.”

The need for a comprehensive framework

While European prosecutions of ISIS members have provided justice to a few survivors and set a precedent for future cases, the cases ultimately involve a tiny fraction of the victims and perpetrators involved in ISIS atrocities.

“There is no comprehensive framework for combining all these cases together and having a system to track them and ensure that the survivors are involved,” says Shamdeen.

In Jelacic’s view, it’s unlikely that an international tribunal will be constituted to specifically focus on ISIS crimes. “I don't see the political will to have a dedicated body to deal with these crimes,” she says.

And while Germany has been proactive regarding the prosecution of ISIS crimes, other European countries have taken a decidedly different approach.

France has permitted its citizens who joined ISIS and who have been detained in Iraq and Syria to be tried in Iraqi courts, despite international NGOs criticising the courts’ lack of procedural safeguards and use of the death penalty.

The UK, rather than repatriate and initiate a prosecution domestically of a woman who joined ISIS as a teenager, stripped her of her UK citizenship.

“The nationality principle under international law is clear that states should investigate and prosecute their nationals who are involved in international crimes abroad,” says Kather. This principle recognises that a country can prosecute nationals for their actions and conduct outside of the country.

Across the EU, states have been slow to repatriate nationals who joined ISIS.

“There is a responsibility for EU states to come up with a coherent strategy under international law, rather than drop their responsibility or outsource their responsibility by withdrawing the citizenship of nationals,” said Kather.

The legal consultant emphasises that states also need to look beyond criminal prosecution and consider “how people can be reintroduced to society and what were the root causes that led the person to join ISIS.”

Every weekday, Uncovering Europe brings you a European story that goes beyond the headlines. Download the Euronews app to get a daily alert for this and other breaking news notifications. It's available on Apple and Android devices.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/08/10/is- ... i-genocide

[Anthea]

Sabaya: the shocking documentary

In August 2014, after Islamic State (ISIS) militants attacked the Sinjar district in northern Iraq, Hogir Hirori realised his calling. Although he had been living in Sweden since 1999, his home town was only about two hours’ drive from Sinjar

“When Daesh [ISIS] attacked, I realised that I could tell these stories in a really specific way,” he says, speaking via video from Stockholm. “I knew the culture and the language, and I’ve been a refugee all my life, so I had the understanding and the insights to do these documentaries very well.” Hirori had trained in media production and worked in Swedish television, but he had never before addressed an international audience. The news coming out of Sinjar changed all that.

Sabaya is the third feature documentary Hirori has made about the consequences of war in northern Iraq, and the fate of the long-persecuted Yazidi people. In 2016, The Girl Who Saved My Life told the story of Hirori’s initial return to the region to document the refugee crisis; 2017’s The Deminer was a nerve-shredding portrait of a Kurdish bomb-disposal expert. In Sabaya, Hirori embeds with a group of unfathomably brave volunteers who infiltrate the dangerous al-Hawl detention camp in Syria in the hope of rescuing some of the estimated 7,000 Yazidi girls and women who have been sex-trafficked by Isis since 2014. The sprawling facility is home to more than 62,000 people, according to recent UN estimates, 80% of whom are women and children.

“It was actually my wife [Lorin Ibrahim] who had this idea to go down to Syria to find out what happened to these women and girls,” says Hirori. Ibrahim is a reporter for Swedish radio and, like her husband, has first-hand experience of life in a conflict zone. “She was 11 years old when she fled from Syria, and it took her three years to reach Sweden.” As the security situation in Syria deteriorated, the couple, who have two small children, changed their plans: “We realised that it was just too dangerous to bring anybody else in, so I decided that I was going to do everything, all the logistics, myself.”

Hirori has deep roots in this part of the world. Yet even he was unaware of the extent of what these kidnapped women – known as “sabaya” – had been through. “It was sort of a taboo to talk about,” he says. He has since come to understand the heavy significance of the term: “It’s been around since ancient times … [It] encompasses [the idea] that you have the right to take these girls in times of war and use them as you please: they clean your house, you can have sex with them.” The victims, too, are brainwashed into this way of thinking, as Hirori explains: “Almost all the young women I met were kidnapped at a very, very young age. They’ve told me: ‘But don’t you understand? We were traitors in our religion. We didn’t follow Islam, and this is God’s punishment; this is what we were destined to do.’ So that’s why it takes such a long time for them to get out of that mental state, and this hell that they’ve been living in.”

The plight of the Yazidis – recognised as a genocide by several international bodies – was widely reported on in 2014, but, seven years on, thousands of girls and women remain missing, abandoned by the rest of the world. This rescue mission has fallen to the Yazidi Home Center (YHC), a tiny volunteer organisation based in Syria and represented in Hirori’s film by Mahmud, a tall, stoic presence, who is constantly struggling for reception on his mobile phone, or in hushed conference with his colleague Ziyad. As Hirori is careful to point out, Mahmud and Ziyad are not the only ones engaged in this urgent work. Indeed, it is the women who go undercover to infiltrate the al-Hawl camp – many survivors of trafficking themselves – who take on the greatest risk. For safety reasons, Hirori says, their names and images could not be included in the film. “We decided only to make a portrait of Mahmud and Ziyad. But it’s important for me not to raise anybody up as a hero. I just wanted to document exactly what was going on in their everyday lives.”

Even so, the YHC had serious reservations about allowing Hirori to film at all. “They told me afterwards that, in the beginning, they were trying to find some kind of white lie, to derail me from doing this documentary. But we established a very good relationship after a while. We had to trust each other in the dangerous situations that we were put in.”
Yazidi Home Center’s Mahmud in a scene from Sabaya.
Yazidi Home Center’s Mahmud in a scene from Sabaya. Photograph: Image courtesy of Lolav Media/Ginestra Film

That danger is abundantly obvious in the film: car chases, shootouts and tense interrogations. It’s the kind of excitement usually seen in Hollywood action films, with one important distinction: everyone remains oddly calm. “I showed a clip to my producer [Antonio Russo Merenda] of a shooting going on, and I had to explain to him why nobody was panicking, like they do in the movies.” Even the horrors of war can become normalised with repetition: “Somebody is getting shot, somebody is getting stabbed, these noises are everywhere and you just don’t become surprised any more. You try to subdue your inner fear, to keep a collective calm, to get through a situation.”

Sadly, in al-Hawl, smuggled guns are a much more common sight than smuggled cameras; this presented Hirori with a practical challenge: “Every time I tried to film in the central square, everybody just gathered around me.” He experimented with using his iPhone instead, holding it to his ear and pretending to talk into it. “But those images didn’t really turn out well.” Another idea, to strap a hidden camera to his body and enter the camp alone, was vetoed outright by the YHC as too dangerous. In the end, Hirori disguised the camera and himself in a niqab (the full-length black veil worn by almost all women in al-Hawl), and entered the camp among the female infiltrators. This produced the distinctive hidden-camera footage that bookends the film, though it’s not as innovative a solution as you might have assumed: “It turns out that a man who had stabbed a member of the security police was wearing a niqab,” says Hirori. “Men very often use the niqab to disguise themselves and enter the square, mainly to gather information and just check things out.”

Sabaya isn’t all such high drama. After rescue, the women are usually taken to Mahmud’s home to begin the long process of recovery, while the YHC works to find more permanent accommodation. It’s here that we meet Mahmud’s sweet and cheeky young son Shadi, and his mother, a welcoming woman who takes great delight in setting discarded niqabs alight as Shadi pokes the pyre with a stick. (“May God eliminate these clothes!”) These are moments of light relief for the audience, but that’s not the main reason for their inclusion, says Hirori. “That part is very important in the recovery of the girls; going back to normality and normal family life. I also wanted to show the humanity and kindness of Mahmud’s family there. They’re not rich people – they’re very poor – but they do share anything that they have with all these women who come to live with them, and anybody else.”

Sabaya trailer.

Hirori himself also often stayed at Mahmud’s home during filming. “I could wake up in the morning and do some cleaning in the house, maybe cook the meal. I spent time playing with the children, talking to anybody.” Slowly, some of the women felt comfortable enough to discuss their traumatic experiences on camera, and these were two-way conversations. “Before I started making these documentaries, I didn’t talk to anyone about my experiences as a refugee, I was very much closed about it,” says Hirori. “It’s just history repeating itself, over and over again. My dad experienced the same thing, and my grandfather experienced the same thing.”

With the release of Sabaya, the third in this unofficial trilogy, does Hirori now feel these women’s story – and his – have been fully told? “After each and every one of my films, I’ve thought: ‘OK, this was the last, and now I just want to focus on being with my family and living my life in Sweden.’ Then something happens, and I feel I have to go back again.” He gives a rueful smile. “So, here I am, again, saying that this is the last film and now I’m going to focus on my normal life.”

Sabaya is released on 20 August.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/a ... -hawl-camp

[Anthea]

The Shame of The Entire World

Everyone knew what ISIS were doing to the Yazidis but [b]NOBODY protected the people of Kocho[/b]



Kocho remembers ISIS massacre

Seven years after the Islamic State (ISIS) massacre in the Yazidi village of Kocho, survivors are gathering in the village to remember the victims

Located 18 kilometres southwest of Shingal, the village was encircled for nearly two weeks after ISIS militants captured the rest of the district on 3 August, 2014.

On August 15, the villagers were gathered at a local school before being separated, with almost all of Kocho’s men shot, boys forced to become child soldiers, and women and girls sold into sexual slavery. Among them was Nadia Murad, now a Nobel Peace Laureate and prominent advocate for the Yazidi community.

“Seven years have passed since the catastrophe of Kocho. The village has been destroyed and exterminated. More than 1,250 people were killed and enslaved,” said village chief Naif Jaso told Rudaw.

There is no official commemoration event this year due to COVID-19, he said, but Yazidis travelled from IDP camps in Duhok to remember the dead and missing.

The ISIS attack on the Yazidis has been widely recognized as genocide. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. Today, 2,760 people are still missing, according to statistics from the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan.

Shame Dero lost five of her ten children to the extremists. She lives in Chamishko camp in Duhok.

Dero says 33 members of her family were captured by the militants. Of them, only 18 members survived. Five of her sons are dead.

“We’re the mothers and sisters of the martyrs. I have lost 13 men in my family. They all have been killed. 33 members of my family were captured. We freed some of them, and others are still in the hands of the infidels,” Dero said on Sunday.

“I urge the Iraqi and the Kurdistan Regional Government to help us. It has been seven years since that dark day… We hope God will help us. Nothing has been done for us,” she added.

The remains of 104 Kocho victims were buried in February after being excavated from a mass grave. According to Jaso, there are 14 mass graves in Kocho, with some still to be excavated.

“Four days ago we had a meeting about uncovering the mass graves. The Iraqi and international teams will investigate another mass grave in September. I asked the UN to help the teams to uncover the mass graves on Mount Shingal,” he said.

A project is underway to memorialize the massacre and turn what remains of Kocho into a museum, Nadia’s Initiative announced in March. New housing will also be built for villagers.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/150820211

[Anthea]

Remembering victims of ISIS

Museum to be built in Shingal to remember Yazidi victims of ISIS

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi paid a rare visit to Shingal district on Monday, visiting the mass graves of Yazidis who were murdered by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. He said they are working on building a museum for the victims.

“We will work on building a museum to commemorate the martyrs of this place, including children, women, and the valiant fighters who defeated terrorism on behalf of the goodwill in the whole world,” Kadhimi said during the visit, according to a statement from his office.

On August 15, the residents of Kocho village were gathered at a local school before being separated, with almost all of the village’s men shot, boys forced to become child soldiers, and women and girls sold into sexual slavery. Among them was Nadia Murad, now a Nobel Peace Laureate and prominent advocate for the Yazidi community.

The ISIS attack on the Yazidis has been widely recognized as genocide. In the first days of the genocide in early August, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. Today, 2,760 people are still missing, according to statistics from the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan.

“The land of Sinjar [Shingal] will remain an immortal shrine in the conscience of the Iraqis, a luminous sign in the record of their patriotism, and a witness to the steadfastness of our Yazidi people and their adherence to their land,” added Kadhimi on Monday.

He also said that the Shingal Agreement signed between Erbil and Baghdad will be implemented and pave the way for the reconstruction in the district as well as “restore familiarity, love and coexistence to it as it was throughout the ages.”

Nadia’s Initiative said in March that a project was underway to memorialize the massacre and turn Nadia Murad’s village, Kocho, into a museum. It is not clear if this is the same project Kadhimi mentioned or a separate one.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/160820214

[Anthea]

Senior YBS commander killed

The Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) announced in a statement the death of its senior commander, Said Hassan, in an airstrike by the Turkish army in Shingal district early Monday

“The invading genocidal Turkish army carried out an airstrike in Shingal. The attack was directed at a military vehicle and resulted in death and injuries,” the YBS said in the statement.

They later said in a separate statement on Twitter that Hassan and his cousin and YBS fighter Isa Khwededa were killed in the attack. Three civilians - Medya Qasim Simo, Shamir Abbas and Mirza Ali - were injured as well, they added.

“This is not the first time such genocidal attacks by the Turkish state against Yazidis take place,” read the statement, adding that their senior commander, Zaki Shingali was also assassinated by Ankara on August 15, 2018 in a similar way.

Turkey considers the YBS as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group fighting for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey which carries out regular military campaigns against the group at home and in northern Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region.

Nadine Maenza, the head of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemned the attack in a tweet. “Turkey's continued targeting of Yazidis should be condemned by the US & intl community,” she said.

Turkey has not commented on the attack yet but it occasionally carries out such attacks against the YBS in Shingal.

The Monday attack coincides with Iraqi PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s rare visit to Shingal, which is known for the 2014 abduction and killing of Yazidis by the Islamic State (ISIS). Several armed forces affiliated to the Iraqi government, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), PKK, and Hashd al-Shaabi are present in Shingal. The district is among the areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad.

Kadhimi told reporters in Shingal that they have launched an investigation into the attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that they will continue attacking Shingal as long as the PKK fighters are present there.

Turkey currently conducts two military campaigns against the PKK in the Kurdistan Region. Beginning in April, it has caused scores of casualties from the PKK, Turkish army and civilians.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/160820213