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Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

A place for discussion and exchanging ideas about Kurdistan issues here, also a place for sharing article & views and analysis about Kurdistan .

Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Mar 17, 2020 12:27 am

Widow of German
rapper jihadist charged


A German-Tunisian woman who married a German rapper turned Islamic State fighter and who kept a Yazidi child slave in Syria has been charged with crimes against humanity, federal prosecutors said Monday

The woman, named as Omaima A., is widely known for having been the wife of notorious German-Ghanaian rapper and ISIS jihadist Denis Cuspert, who went by the stage name Deso Dogg.

Arrested in September in Hamburg, she now faces a slew of charges over her membership of the extremist group.

"The defendant is suspected of having been involved as a member with the foreign terrorist organisation ''Islamic State''.

She is also charged... with crimes against humanity," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors said Omaima A. had travelled to Syria in January 2015 with her three children to join her first husband and their father, Nadar H., in Syria.

She lived under ISIS rules, raising her children following the group''s doctrines, and receiving monthly financial help from the militant outfit, prosecutors said.

Between spring and summer 2015, Omaima A. allegedly held a 13-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave

She married the rapper Denis Cuspert after her first husband was killed in an air raid in Kobane, according to prosecutors.

Cuspert, killed in 2018 in an airstrike in Syria, was one of the most notorious Western fighters for ISIS, having appeared in several propaganda videos including one that apparently showed him with a man''s severed head.

She subsequently left Cuspert and returned to Germany pregnant with their child, as well as her three other children, in 2016.

According to German media, Omaima A. quietly slipped back into German society after her return to Europe, working as an event manager and interpreter.

But a Lebanese journalist broke her story last year, sparking outrage in Germany over why she had not faced prosecution back in her home country.

https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll ... ty/1763269
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Mar 19, 2020 1:48 am

Shadow on the Mountain:

A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance, and Hope

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Katharine Holstein, an American-Canadian writer and human rights advocate. She's also the co-author of a new book, which she tells us about:

"Shadow on the Mountain: A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance, and Hope." As was noted of this work by The New York Journal of Books: "A spellbinding tale woven with gorgeous phrasing, compelling you to finish its journey at a breakneck pace along with Shaker Jeffrey, a hero of Promethean proportions....

The book offers a class-ten white-water trip through the cruelties of war, terrorism, and how humanity still rises above the darkness and sadism found in men at war time.... It takes a strong stomach to read this memoir, but the journey is worth it."

https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/post/s ... e-and-hope
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Mar 19, 2020 11:47 pm

Image

The world deems it healthy for Yazidis to live in old, wet, falling to bits tents surrounded by mud and water

Image

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PLEASE follow link to video:

https://www.facebook.com/sharzad.khidr/ ... 431678807/
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:36 am

Yazidi symbols explained

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The circle is divided into two sections with a strikethrough that crosses the upper third of the Tawa`s ... at the top there are twelve eyes (indicating the twelve Yezidis greats) and also indicates twelve gates of knowledge in the sacred Yezid knowledge, and indicates twelve paths of energy Between the two minor and major cosmic images

These twelve eyes are surrounded by an urn to signify that they are submission to the 72 cosmic laws in the Yezidi invisible sacred science

These twelve eyes are crowned with two color a yellow crowns in the middle and red in the edges to indicate the height of the presence of the owners of these stations at the solar level (causal) surrounded by the Adi power of a red color or submissioned to his power and reflects his volition

The seven arrows that come under the twelve gates indicate the seven worlds and the presence of the arrow in red means that they are all governed by Sultan Adi, and the presence of the blue and yellow colors above these arrows indicates the superior awareness levels (blue level and yellow level) so that one can reach the queen Adania (sons and daughters of the sun)

In the circles of the celestial monarchy and the cosmic system the red color indicates the sacred royal level of consciousness, the yellow color indicates the sacred level of Shishmas, and the blue color indicates the sacred level of the Archangel (Tausi Malik)

The Supreme Circle represents the cosmic system andits sacred world and the superior levels of consciousness governed by a system that transcends the nature of our comprehension of it and exceeds the level of our simple intellectual faculties over its understanding

The lower half of the circle represents our earthly world and there are twelve paths of knowledge and twelve paths of energy in an inverted way in a lighted red color (a third of the human being is only divine) and the circle is protected by two blue and yellow colors to signify the rule of Tausi king and Sheikh Shams Adani for this level the ground awareness

Four flares refer to the four elements through which the universe is established (water, air, dust and fire) and the levels of consciousness reflected by them

The circle which peacocks stand on has four levels of awareness if the human being wants to enlighten the substantial that mediates this circle (the soul) and elevate it to higher positions and take it to superior levels of awareness

The Akkadian cuneiform script that beside the four flares refers to the seven worlds (physical, astral, mental, emotional, causal, intuitive, Adi) and transcending these worlds by practicing the paths of righteousness (al-Birkhek) leads one to the opposite side

Writing in the white rectangle means (purity, pureness, righteousness) and the two words in the upper part of the rectangle mean controlling the mind and emotion, and enabling the individual to reach the illuminated tree (at the upper levels and not the ground screen), at the bottom of the three conical domes, there are seven flares If one can cross seven levels of consciousness in the seven worlds in the world, then the club in which we live will reach the level of the solar consciousness (sons and daughters of the sun)) The arrow at the bottom of the conical domes notes the crossing to the causal level, and all this process is done under the supervision of color Blue Mullah Eki (Tausi Malak)

The sum of the twelve gates of knowledge in the upper half of the circle with twelve paths of inverted energy constitute twenty-four .. This number means that there are two vertical chariots of the soul vehicle controlling its path, namely the Pir and the Marabi
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:46 am

Rape, torture and capture

The doctor helping Yazidi victims of Daesh rebuild their lives

“Doctor, why is it that people can be so evil? Why did they kill my mother and father? Why did they torture me like that? Doctor, why are humans doing this?”

This is a series of questions that German psychologist, Dr Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, has heard since 2015 from children as young as nine years old when he started bringing the Yazidi survivors of Daesh assaults to Germany.

Dr Kizilhan is still searching for the answers to these questions, to one day be able to respond to those who have suffered cruel fates under the control of Daesh, and are still grappling to make sense of the trauma to this day.

Intense experiences lead to intense emotions, he explains, and the prevalence of psychological trauma among refugee youth should be an issue of utmost urgency.

Dr Kizilhan personally interviews and counsels Yazidi women who were tortured, raped and captured as Daesh slaves. He has made many trips to refugee camps in northern Iraq, looking for the most vulnerable survivors, and often faced difficult choices regarding who was able to return to Germany with him for treatment, and who was to stay behind.

He is on a mission to help people rebuild their lives as part of a program to bring Yazidi women and girls to Germany, funded by Baden-Württemberg minister-president, Winfried Kretschmann, in November 2014, months after the Sinjar district in northern Iraq was attacked by Daesh.

Iraqi Kurdish actors perform in "My ears are talking", a play directed by Kurdish Karukh Ibrahim denouncing the threat of the Islamic State (IS) to the Yazidi religious minority's women and girls, on 10 December, 2018, in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq [SAFIN HAMED/AFP via Getty Images]

Iraqi Kurdish actors perform in “My ears are talking”, a play directed by Kurdish Karukh Ibrahim denouncing the threat of the Islamic State (IS) to the Yazidi religious minority’s women and girls, on 10 December, 2018, in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq [SAFIN HAMED/AFP via Getty Images]

In what the United Nations described as a genocide of the Yazidi people, tens of thousands of members of religious and ethnic minorities were expelled – Christians, Yazidis, Shias and Turkmen – who had been living side-by-side for centuries.

A long-persecuted minority, the Yazidis are a majority Kurdish-speaking religious group living mostly in northern Iraq. They amount to a population of less than one million worldwide. This ancient faith, one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, has survived for centuries by living apart in a tight-knit community.

“They were not comfortable in Arab society because they were a target for many radical Islamic groups. This is why most of the Yazidis in Iraq were living in villages and not in cities, because they know their community will be attacked in society. So, they have a distance with the general Muslim society,” explains Dr Kizilhan.

Those who managed to escape the brutal attacks have ended up in displacement camps scattered around Iraqi Kurdistan, with a small number relocating to neighbouring countries or Western countries as refugees. In Germany, their numbers are estimated at 25,000.

Meanwhile, the fate of more than two thousand women who were kidnapped in the same year is still unknown.

One eight-year-old girl, Dr Kizilhan’s youngest patient, was repeatedly sold and raped, while another girl set herself on fire to make herself less attractive to her Daesh captors.

“They wake up at night, have nightmares and are afraid that Daesh will come and take them again. They suffer frequent fainting fits or flashbacks when they relive their rape and torture. They are frightened, unsure, nervous, tense, have no hope, are embarrassed about their rape and often entertain suicidal thoughts,” reveals Dr Kizilhan.

However, Dr Kizilhan believes that child victims are not helpless nor hopeless. For example, one nine-year-old girl he examined was trapped in the hands of Daesh for ten months.

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate August 10, 2014 [REUTERS/Rodi Said]

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to Daesh on 10 August 2014 [REUTERS/Rodi Said]

“I asked her if she was ready to come with me to Germany, to which she asked me, ‘do you have schools in Germany?’ I responded ‘Yes, we have schools, why?’ ‘because one day I want to sit on your chair and want to be a doctor and help my people.’ ”

“This showed me that human beings have so much power if they believe in it,” recounts the doctor.

In the report, “UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict,” the United Nations asserts that: “Rape committed during war is often intended to terrorise the population, break up families, destroy communities, and, in some instances, change the ethnic makeup of the next generation.”

For centuries, rape has been used as a weapon – possibly the most brutal weapon of war – in order to exercise power and dominance over women and undermine the social fabric of society.

Even after the end of wars and conflicts, rape and sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls leaves a permanent mark, both physically and psychologically: unwanted pregnancies, victim shaming, stigmatisation and the ostracising of women.

Five years following the war, Dr Kizilhan found that 58 per cent of the Yazidi women at the time of the interview, out of a total of 268 Yazidi women – living either in a household or in a refugee camp – still suffer a very high existence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Also, that sexual exploitation often is accompanied by severe alienation, humiliation, hopelessness and loss of control. This, in turn, could explain the link to PTSD.

“They worry most about the associated humiliation experienced through ostracism in front of the other members of their community,” Dr Kizilhan interprets.

He also explains that these women who managed to escape from Daesh found themselves back in their deeply conservative communities in northern Iraq, with little to no access to psychological help to work through the unspeakable horrors that they had experienced.

He found that they are not primarily worried about the events themselves or having broken social rules, instead, they worry most about the associated humiliation experienced through ostracism by the other members of their community.

Dr Kizilhan uses specific interviewing techniques to ensure that the women and children feel in control during the interview, as well as to minimise distress, as they struggle from feeling irrevocably changed by their trauma.

In the Middle East therapy is still a relatively new concept, with more of a focus on physical well-being. Psychological disorders still bear some stigmatisation, according to the doctor.

Arab tradition regards doctors, religious figures and family members as the proper alleviators of distress and illness.

“People who need help fear that they will be labelled as ‘abnormal’ if they go for psychotherapy, much research shows post-traumatic disorders bear shame in the Middle East, so we needed to find a way to accommodate that,” he stresses. “Healing requires empathy.”

After extensive research, he labelled it “transcultural psychotherapy”, a relatively new field that takes such cultural and contextual factors into account.

Dr Kizilhan has been advancing the field for decades in Germany, and later founded the Institute for Transcultural Health Science at Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, which focuses on the “internationalisation” of health research.

Its mission is to train the first generation of psychotherapists in Iraq and to integrate licensed psychotherapy into the nation’s health system, and eventually the broader Middle East.

“In a ‘shame culture’, it is not so much the incident itself and the perpetration of a possible violation of the norm that plays a part, but rather how one can ‘save face’ in front of others,” he clarifies.

“Also, we know from studies, this trauma is being passed on from one generation to the next, we have to take this into account. It is not just the individual issue. We have to remember, the Yazidis witnessed 74 genocides.”

For example, after treating thousands of Yazidi women, the family – whether it’s the grandfather, father or mother – are always talking about the massacres of their ancestors.

In the view of Dr Kizilhan, the children grow up with the foreboding idea that something as tragic awaits them too, referring to this as “transgenerational trauma”.

Regarding the 1,000 survivors he brought to Germany in 2014, Dr Kizilhan shares that they have integrated well and that 35 women have already married and had children.

Dr Kizilhan emphasises: “This is very important for the traumatised Yazidis – to have security, orientation and stabilisation. The main idea of treatment is not to teach them how to forget it. It’s a part of their lives.”

How the issue is addressed in post-conflict periods is what is vital according to Dr Kizilhan. Therefore, the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in the Arab region requires significant improvement.

He adds: “If you don’t have a perspective for tomorrow’s future or an idea of a future, you will remain in the past, and the past for the Yazidis, contains only terror and trauma.”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200 ... eir-lives/
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Mar 26, 2020 12:27 am

You Are Just Watching

Teenage author breaks disturbing new ground after ISIS rule over Yazidis

Erbil's political elites gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the Kurdish regional capital's Rotana Hotel for the launch of the new book, You Are Just Watching: The Story of Yazidi Children who Survived the Islamic State, by Sham Barham.

The book's author, a 17-year-old high school student, was just 15 when she first began conducting interviews in IDP camps with survivors. She was helped by Yazidi journalist Risala Sharkani, who also spoke at the Tuesday night event.

"We [as Kurds] have to write our history by ourselves and we have to react to it by ourselves," said Sharkani. The writers and intellectuals of Kurdistan must continue to document the atrocities they have endured, she maintains.

Sham was also supported by her parents. Her father, Barham Ali, is a well-known journalist from BasNews and her mother, Naz Abdullah, is a famous Kurdish media personality. Sham had the idea to write the book after being included in her parents work and accompanying them on their charitable campaigns. Sham's first foray into journalism suggests she will follow in the footsteps of her famous parents.

This book focuses on the experiences of children and documents the stories of ten who survived life under the Islamic State group.

"Since the tragedy, the mainstream media has put the spotlight only on the adult victims and there wasn't a specific media to focus on the children," says Sham. As a child herself she felt she could relate more to the stories of children.

Salam was just seven years old when he had to bury his sister with his own hands.

Four years later, the family still live in an IDP camp in Erbil - and, despite the presence of international aid groups, Salam's mother feels that no-one is helping them.

She is a mother to eight children, one of whom was killed during the war. She gently weeps as she holds up a 5,000-Iraqi-dinar bill (about $4). This is the amount her cousin was sold for. She is still trapped inside the city of Raqqa.

"The title [of the new book] says you are just watching - that's because… to be honest, most of the world is just watching," says Sham.

"If the world is not just watching, then the world should do something about it."

You are just watching joins recently published books on the topic, including Layla and the Nights of Pain, written by an Yazidi survivor, and The Last Yazidi Genocide by activist Amy Beam.

Beam argues that the world knows the story of the Yazidi women, and that it's time for the international narrative to move on to discussing mass migration and resettlement.

Children go missing in times of conflict. Separated from their parents during times of conflict, children can be abducted, forced into military service or servitude, orphaned and adopted, and finally they can be found and reunited.

In the aftermath of the chemical bombardment of Halabja, 200 children were reported missing - either killed or "rescued" and taken to Iran, where Iranian families adopted them. To this day, victims are waiting to be reunited with their biological relatives through DNA testing.

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/b ... i-children
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:22 am

17-year-old Yazidi girl
reed from ISIS captivity


According to the Yazidi House (Mala Êzîdiyan) of the Cizîrê region in northern Syria, a Yazidi girl has been freed from the captivity of the jihadist militia ISIS. 17-year-old Leyla Murad. had been abducted from her residence in Southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq to an ISIS household during the attack on Shengal in August 2014

Her last place of residence was the Hol Camp near Hesekê. There she was abused as a slave by ISIS supporters who were captured by the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) during the final operation against the last ISIS bastion Baghouz in Deir ez-Zor in Eastern Syria last March. Through meticulous research by the Yazidi House, her whereabouts could be determined. The institution now provides psychological first assistance and health care for the young woman. Afterwards she will be reunited with her family.

The Yazidi House is an institution dedicated to the search for the abducted Yazidis from Shengal. According to information from the association's board of directors, about 3,000 Yazidi men and women are still missing. So far 55 Yazidi women and 179 Yazidi children have been freed from the Hol Camp However, the organization assumes that there are far more deportees in the camp.

Attack on Shengal

On August 3, 2014, with the onslaught of the ISIS in Shengal (Sinjar), the Yazidi people were left to another genocide, the 74th one they suffered throughout their history.

Those who could save themselves fled to the mountains. On the way there, countless children and elderly people died of thirst.

Those who could no longer make it out of the town were brutally murdered. Thousands of young Yazidi women were kidnapped and raped, maltreated and sold in the slave markets of the ISIS.

More than 12,000 people were murdered, according to the UN, and more than 400,000 were driven from their homes. Several women, men and children are still missing today.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:57 pm

Yezidi religion in English
By Ezdixanvin Design


18 Oct 2013

This video was made by the Yezidis religion in order for English speaking people to better understand their very ancient and amazing culture

هذا الفيديو باللغة الانكليزية عن معبد لالش من انتاج صحيفة الديانة الايزيدية في العراق العالم يرجئ من كل المواقع الايزيدية و الصفحات العامة و الخاصة علئ الفيسبوك و القنوات الخاصة علئ موقع اليوتب الاشارة بذلك و
-------------

FACBOOK

Êzîdîsche Fakten:

https://www.facebook.com/ezidischefakten

Yeziden/ اليزيدية:

https://www.facebook.com/Yeziden.ezdi...

INSTAGRAM:

http://instagram.com/ezidischefakten

APP!!!

Ezidische Fakten & Lalish

Android ( Google Play store ):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

iPhone ( iOS ):

https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/ezidi...

Windows Phone:

http://www.windowsphone.com/de-de/sto...

Link to Video:

https://youtu.be/KAQVQVR9J8Q
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Mar 31, 2020 10:16 pm

I do not know when the following video was taken

I wonder how many of these gentle people survived the slaughter

https://youtu.be/YfGcDGoepSw
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:47 pm

Iraq to exhume bodies
from Yazidi mass graves


Khairi Ali Ibrahim watched on as teams of workers exhumed a mass grave of Yazidis in Kocho village, south of Sinjar. “It was difficult for the Yazidis," he said. "We waited for about five years for this step.”

Ibrahim, the director of the Yazidi Organization for Documentation in Sinjar, said the exhumation, conducted in March, was part of an initiative by a national team of Iraqi parliamentarians and politicians and UN representatives to exhume mass graves and to promote accountability for crimes committed by the Islamic State (ISIS).

On Feb. 27, the national team announced its first list of individuals found in the Yazidi mass grave. It included 62 names, all of them male.

At a Baghdad press conference, the national team said that 73 mass Yazidi graves had been found, and 13 of them exhumed. The remains of 347 victims have been retrieved from the graves. The team noted that the official funeral processions will take place March 12. The team noted that the burials will take place within the two following days. However, all ceremonies were postponed until further notice due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Saeb Khadr, a parliamentarian for the Yazidis, praised the efforts of the international and national teams for their contribution to exhuming the graves. He affirmed at the press conference that the remaining graves will be exhumed, and he called for more attention to this matter. Khadr urged handing over IS members to the courts and charging them with committing genocide.

Dia al-Saadi, director of the Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection of the Martyrs Foundation, a governmental body, told Al-Monitor that the process of opening mass graves faces several challenges, including attacks from IS and its allies. The exhumation teams face other challenges such as diseases, difficulty breathing and sunstroke. Also, the graves are far from the cities and lack suitable places for teams to live, not to mention a shortage of finances to complete the work.

Saadi said the team's tasks include "searching for and opening mass graves and exhuming bodies, controlling and documenting the evidence, and then handing the remains to forensic medicine to conduct matching operations between the bone specimen obtained from the remains and the blood sample provided by the families of the victims. An identity verification document is then issued for those who are identified. All legal papers are also referred to the competent courts to enable and assist the judiciary to issue appropriate decisions.”

He agreed with Ibrahim that the identification of victims will help alleviate their families' suffering. It could also help rebuild trust between the families and state institutions, as well as facilitate accountability and future judicial procedures.

“Not all names of the exhumed bodies are revealed since the matching procedures are still ongoing in the forensic medicine department," Saadi said, adding that they do not have enough information about victims to make identifications. "The next steps will be to open soon some mass graves in Ninevah province. All Iraqis’ graves in general were documented and the names of the victims were entered into a database for the department.”

Ibrahim told Al-Monitor that the 62 Yazidis found in a mass grave had been shot and killed by the Islamic State. “The specialists and those who supervised the opening of the Yazidi mass graves confirmed this," he said. "They stated that most of the injuries were in the head and chest of the victims, all from Kocho village.”

He said the mass grave was discovered with the help of field survey teams as well as male and female survivors, "who were with their families when ISIS executed them."

“Some graves were already open, which led to bone loss," Ibrahim said. "Others were washed away by the rain torrents and must be worked on in utmost speed. The incomplete blood samples and their severe shortage substantially slow the work in forensic medicine. Some families may have no surviving members or one at best.”

Ali al-Bayati, a member of the Independent High Commission for Human Rights in Iraq, said the mass grave at Alo Antar, a giant pit, "contains the remains of more than 400 Shiite Turkmen victims, 600 Yazidis and other groups in addition to the bodies of members of the security forces from different regions in Mosul who were killed by al-Qaeda and IS members.”

Quoting eyewitnesses, Bayati said IS would detonate explosives at Alo Antar to expand the pit of graves. He said the government is working to open this mass grave to provide victims' families a sense of justice. Those families have given testimonies to the International Commission on Missing Persons and the Council of the Independent High Commission for Human Rights.

The Office of Kidnapped Yazidis, funded by the Kurdistan Regional Government, said the Islamic State killed and kidnapped thousands of Yazidis, and that dozens of mass graves are located in Sinjar and the Ninevah Plains.

Of note, the first Yazidi mass grave was opened on March 15, 2019, in Kocho village.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... ities.html
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:29 pm

Medical workers warn of 'disaster'

Disaster for Yazidis if coronavirus hits Iraq's Sinjar region

Iraq's conflict-ravaged Sinjar region may become a "disaster area" if the coronavirus pandemic spreads there, health and aid workers warned.

The region in northern Iraq has struggled to recover from what the UN has a dubbed a genocide in 2014, when the Islamic State (ISIS) group swept across the area and massacred thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority.

The intervention of air strikes and fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) eventually led to the area being freed from ISIS, but control of the area has remained contested since then.

In addition, thousands of people remain housed in international displaced people (IDP) camps, including on Sinjar mountain.

Hussein Rasho, a doctor who was working in Sinjar until 10 days ago, said that although there had been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the conditions in the area mean the impact would be devastating.

"There is no good care from the Iraqi government. All of the funding and facilities are coming from international organisations and sometimes local organisations," he told Middle East Eye.

"If an outbreak happens, it will be a disaster area.”

A general view shows a make-shift camp for displaced Iraqi people from the Yazidi community, on Mount Sinjar

Rasho, who is now prevented from accessing Sinjar by a government-imposed countrywide lockdown, said there were two main hospitals in the district left standing after the ISIS rampage: Sinuny Hospital and Sinjar Hospital.

There are only about 20 beds in each hospital, and both remain reliant on foreign organisations for resources and equipment.

One organisation providing support in Sinjar is Nadia's Initiative, which was established by the former ISIS slavery victim Nadia Murad.

The NGO has been involved in distributing food and protective equipment in the district, as well as carrying out a disinfectant campaign in towns and villages.

Still, much of the work - including building hospitals and the disinfectant campaign - has been put on hold as a result of the lockdown, said Executive Director Abid Shamdeen.

"Lack of hospital beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment there is a problem as soon as the virus hits - and of course we don’t know whether there are cases now because there is no testing," he told MEE.

"So our hope is that the international community and hopefully the World Health Organisation (WHO) in coordination with Iraqi and Kurdish authorities will put specific measures in place to get some resources there."

Porous border infection risk

Areas in southern Iraq have been the hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak, particularly the cities of Najaf and Karbala, which regularly see visits by Iranian pilgrims.

Iran has been one of the countries worst affected globally by the outbreak, with official figures putting the death toll at 3,294, with 53,183 infected.

By comparison, Iraq has only recorded 772 infections and 54 deaths . Still, a report by Reuters on Thursday suggested the actual figures may be substantially higher. Iraqi authorities later condemned Reuters for "inaccurate" reporting and suspended the agency's licence in the country for three months.

However, a Reuters spokesperson said on Friday that the news agency had "not received notification" from Iraqi authorities regarding its licence and was "seeking clarification on the matter".

"We stand by our story of April 2, which was based on multiple, well-placed medical and political sources, and also fully represented the position of the Iraqi health ministry. Reuters will continue to report on Iraq in a fair, independent and impartial way, as we do all around the world".

Rasho said that there had been a number of suspected cases in Sinjar, which had come from soldiers who were sent from the south.

    'The Kurds from Turkey and Syria are joining the others in Sinjar, so it will be the source of infection because they are crossing the border, they have their own rules and their own routes and even before then no one could stop them'

    - Hussein Rasho, doctor
Since then, the Iraqi government had begun extending the length of shift deployments, so as to limit the risk of contagion.

Rasho said his main concern came from the porous border with Syria, and Kurdish groups travelling among Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

"The YPG (People's Protection Units) and PKK are still moving from Iraq to Syria, especially through the Rabia and Sinjar [border crossings], so I think if something happens it will be very bad," he said.

"The Kurds from Turkey and Syria are joining the others in Sinjar, so it will be a source of infection because they are crossing the border, they have their own rules and their own routes and even before then no one could stop them."

The PKK has maintained a foothold in Sinjar through the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a Yazidi-majority organisation that has clashed with other Kurdish groups, including those supported by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Turkey also intermittently carries out air strikes in Sinjar against the YBS and other targets it alleges are linked to the PKK, which has fought a guerilla war with Turkey since 1984.

'Genocide' in the camps

More than 500,000 Yazidi residents of Sinjar had fled the district by March 2015 in the wake of the ISIS massacres. The majority have yet to return to the district and are scattered across internally displaced people's camps in northern Iraq.

In mid-March, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Iraqi Red Crescent Society said they had delivered food and hygiene kits to more than 2,300 families on Mount Sinjar.

They warned that they would be "particularly vulnerable" to the impact of an infectious disease like coronavirus.

Coronavirus: Iraqi doctors warn of healthcare collapse if cases continue to rise

Rasho, who was working in a refugee camp near Zakho in northern Iraq on Friday, said that conditions in the camps were ripe for spreading the coronavirus infection.

He pointed out that in some cases 10 families were using the same bathroom.

The social distancing called for by the WHO - as well as total isolation for those actually suffering from Covid-19 - would be virtually impossible.

"I think it will be a genocide in the camps," he said.

"They need home isolation and self-isolation - and this is very hard to do in the camps and in Sinjar."

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/medi ... its-sinjar
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:27 pm

Shingal Reconstruction
Gets Boost from Japan


Japan has made the decision to contribute $3.6 million to support the reconstruction of Yazidi’s Shingal, also known as Sinjar, in conjunction with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme

The funds are intended for the reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts in Iraq post-ISIS and is supposed to specifically target those who have not received any support for the reconstruction of their homes. It will also include vocational training.

Before the rise of ISIS, Sinjar was (and still is) home to the Yazidis, an ethnic-religious minority group. ISIS committed mass genocide against the Yazidis, killing the men and sexually enslaving the women, before moving into the Christian areas of the Nineveh Governorate. By that point, it had become clear that ISIS was targeting all religious minorities for genocide and that both Christians and Yazidis were the primary victims.

Reconstruction of these areas post-ISIS have faced a number of difficulties, one being the massive financial cost of rebuilding. The local authorities frequently stated that there are not enough funds to address reconstruction. Some places, like Qeraqosh and East Mosul, have seen significant reconstruction. Others, like Sinjar and Telskuf, have struggled to reach the same level of reconstruction.

The reasons for this are more than just monetary, as competing local militias often cause challenges for rebuilding.

For interviews, please contact Olivia Miller, Communications Coordinator: press@persecution.org.

https://www.persecution.org/2020/04/12/ ... ost-japan/
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Apr 14, 2020 11:09 pm

Iraq to exhume bodies
from Yazidi mass graves


Khairi Ali Ibrahim watched on as teams of workers exhumed a mass grave of Yazidis in Kocho village, south of Sinjar. “It was difficult for the Yazidis," he said. "We waited for about five years for this step.”

Ibrahim, the director of the Yazidi Organization for Documentation in Sinjar, said the exhumation, conducted in March, was part of an initiative by a national team of Iraqi parliamentarians and politicians and UN representatives to exhume mass graves and to promote accountability for crimes committed by the Islamic State (ISIS).

On Feb. 27, the national team announced its first list of individuals found in the Yazidi mass grave. It included 62 names, all of them male.

At a Baghdad press conference, the national team said that 73 mass Yazidi graves had been found, and 13 of them exhumed. The remains of 347 victims have been retrieved from the graves. The team noted that the official funeral processions will take place March 12. The team noted that the burials will take place within the two following days. However, all ceremonies were postponed until further notice due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Saeb Khadr, a parliamentarian for the Yazidis, praised the efforts of the international and national teams for their contribution to exhuming the graves. He affirmed at the press conference that the remaining graves will be exhumed, and he called for more attention to this matter. Khadr urged handing over IS members to the courts and charging them with committing genocide.

Dia al-Saadi, director of the Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection of the Martyrs Foundation, a governmental body, told Al-Monitor that the process of opening mass graves faces several challenges, including attacks from IS and its allies. The exhumation teams face other challenges such as diseases, difficulty breathing and sunstroke. Also, the graves are far from the cities and lack suitable places for teams to live, not to mention a shortage of finances to complete the work.

Saadi said the team's tasks include "searching for and opening mass graves and exhuming bodies, controlling and documenting the evidence, and then handing the remains to forensic medicine to conduct matching operations between the bone specimen obtained from the remains and the blood sample provided by the families of the victims. An identity verification document is then issued for those who are identified. All legal papers are also referred to the competent courts to enable and assist the judiciary to issue appropriate decisions.”

He agreed with Ibrahim that the identification of victims will help alleviate their families' suffering. It could also help rebuild trust between the families and state institutions, as well as facilitate accountability and future judicial procedures.

“Not all names of the exhumed bodies are revealed since the matching procedures are still ongoing in the forensic medicine department," Saadi said, adding that they do not have enough information about victims to make identifications. "The next steps will be to open soon some mass graves in Ninevah province. All Iraqis’ graves in general were documented and the names of the victims were entered into a database for the department.”

Ibrahim told Al-Monitor that the 62 Yazidis found in a mass grave had been shot and killed by the Islamic State. “The specialists and those who supervised the opening of the Yazidi mass graves confirmed this," he said. "They stated that most of the injuries were in the head and chest of the victims, all from Kocho village.”

He said the mass grave was discovered with the help of field survey teams as well as male and female survivors, "who were with their families when IS executed them."

“Some graves were already open, which led to bone loss," Ibrahim said. "Others were washed away by the rain torrents and must be worked on in utmost speed. The incomplete blood samples and their severe shortage substantially slow the work in forensic medicine. Some families may have no surviving members or one at best.”

Ali al-Bayati, a member of the Independent High Commission for Human Rights in Iraq, said the mass grave at Alo Antar, a giant pit, "contains the remains of more than 400 Shiite Turkmen victims, 600 Yazidis and other groups in addition to the bodies of members of the security forces from different regions in Mosul who were killed by al-Qaeda and IS members.”

Quoting eyewitnesses, Bayati said IS would detonate explosives at Alo Antar to expand the pit of graves. He said the government is working to open this mass grave to provide victims' families a sense of justice. Those families have given testimonies to the International Commission on Missing Persons and the Council of the Independent High Commission for Human Rights.

The Office of Kidnapped Yazidis, funded by the Kurdistan Regional Government, said the Islamic State killed and kidnapped thousands of Yazidis, and that dozens of mass graves are located in Sinjar and the Ninevah Plains.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... ities.html
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Apr 14, 2020 11:41 pm

Red Wednesday

Yazidi New Year’s Eve Public Holiday
Sadly, the Yazidis have little to celebrate this year. Especially those who have been living in camps for almost 6 years.

Image

Previous celebrations

Charshama Sor (meaning Red Wednesday) is the celebration of Yazidi New Year which occurs in April every year on the Wednesday after the 20th of the month. Charshama Sor falls on Wednesday, April 20, for 2016.

The Yazidis claim to have one of the oldest religions in the world and their evidence for this is their calendar. In April 2016, the Yazidi calendar is in the year 6766. This renders the Yazidi Calendar older than any other religious calendars such as the Christian or Gregorian calendar, the Jewish Calendar, and the Islamic Calendar.

Before the Islamic State (IS) attacked their area, Yazidis were celebrating the Red Wednesday by gathering at their holy sites, making food and going on picnics; but they have been, for the last two years, only performing prayers in the Lalish Temple and at Shikh Sharafaddn Tomb.

Marking the Yazidi’s New Year in the Spring, Yazidi women traditionally paint eggs a day before the Red Wednesday and hang flowers at their doorstep to welcome the new year, Yazidi Scholar Pir Khidir Sulayman says.

They also halt every wedding during the first month of Yazidi calendar, believing that “nature is a beautiful bride which needs respect and no other brides are needed in this period,” Sulayman explained.

Baba Chawish, the senior servant of the Lalish Temple told BasNews that they are praying on this new year for their people abducted by IS, wishing the atrocities finally come to an end and the Yazidi captives will be set free by the new year.

One of the most important elements of the Yazidi faith is their belief in oneness with nature. Yazidis pay homage to the Sun three to five times each day. When Yazidis pray, they face the sun. The Sun represents the source of energy or ultimate truth. It is sacred and seen as the emanation of God.

Another important facet of Yazidi faith is the Peacock Angel which is a holy entity to Yazidis. They worship the Peacock Angel because to them, it is the chief angel which keeps the secrets of the great God of all creations, which is related to the ordering of the major gods or angels in the Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity; as Yazidis have beliefs that are unique to them and which are different from other religious beliefs.

The Yazidis live mainly in Kurdistan Region, northern Iraq. There are over one million Yazidis in the world. Historically, the Yazidis lived primarily in communities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They also had existed in Armenia and Georgia. However, events in the 20th and 21st centuries and mass migrations led to a notably demographic change in those areas. As a result, population estimates of Yazidis are accurately unclear in many regions and estimates of the size of the total population vary.

The estimated Yazidi population in Iraq in early 2015 was approximately 600,000. They are particularly concentrated in northern Iraq in the Nineveh Province where there is their holiest site which is called Lalish to which the Yazidis perform pilgrimage. The two largest communities in Kurdistan are in the Shekhan district, northeast of Mosul, and the Sinjar district at the Syrian border 80 km west of Mosul.

Yazidis in Syria live primarily in two communities, one in the Jazira area in Syrian Kurdistan and the other in the Kurd-dagh. The Population of the Syrian Yazidis however is not precisely known.

During and after a great flood around 4000 BC, the Yazidis dispersed to many countries in Asia, including India, Afghanistan, Armenia, Morocco and possibly India. Returning from their adoptive countries around 2000 BC, the Yazidis played an important role in the development of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Jewish civilisations of the Middle East. Ultimately, the Yazidis amalgamated elements of all these civilisations into Yazidism as well as certain features of the Zoroastrian religion of Persia.

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

An estimated 3,000 people, mainly women and children from the Kurdish Yazidi minority, are believed to be held as slaves in Iraq by Islamic State
Last edited by Anthea on Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Apr 14, 2020 11:48 pm

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