Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Why Yezidis do not return home after liberation of Sinjar from ISIS

Although the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and allied local fighters, backed by the US-led coalition, have recaptured the Yezidi district of Sinjar (Shingal) and the surrounding villages in northern Iraq from the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS), the displaced Yezidi civilians are still reluctant to return home.

The anti-ISIS battles in Shingal left a great damage in the infrastructure of the area, according to locals. This is why the majority of Yezidis prefer to stay in the refugee camps set up by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Some displaced Yezidis complained about the ISIS-led mass destruction in their towns and villages in Shingal and its surroundings, while others expressed their concerns about the fragile security situation that surround the Yezidi areas in northern Iraq. The ghost of ISIS still overshadows the whole scene of the region, they argued.

ISIS still poses threat to Shingal

Speaking to ARA News, Shaban Khalaf, a displaced Yazidi from Shingal based in the refugee camp of Bajdkandala near the town of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan, said: “One of the reasons why Yezidis do not return to Shingal is ISIS presence in the nearby areas. Current ISIS positions are not very far from Shingal.”

“Who knows? Daesh may launch a surprise attack on our areas once again, especially the clashes are still ongoing between the Peshmerga forces and Shingal Protection Units (YBS) on the one hand, and ISIS terrorists on the other, in southern Shingal,” he argued, using an acronym for ISIS.

“The terror group still poses a threat to Shingal,” he told ARA News.

Khalaf pointed out that Shingal’s infrastructure has been destroyed due to the heavy shelling and bombings by the conflicting parties.

“Dozens of houses in the area have been looted and robbed,” Khalaf added, pointing out that Shingal needs also an intensive reconstruction campaign “after this devastating war”.

“If we did not rebuild the region’s infrastructure, Yezidis would not be able to live in the area from now on,” he stressed.

Abduction

Yasser Kaalo, a displaced Yezidi man, spoke to ARA News in the Shariya camp [in Duhok] for Yezidi refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan, saying that most of people fear to face a similar scenario as thousands of women and children are still held hostages at the hands of the terror group.

“Also, the fate of hundreds of people is still unknown,” he added. “This had put a negative impact on us.”

Kaalo emphasized that also the land-mines planted by ISIS terrorists in Shingal region hinder his return with his family to their hometown.

Yezidis need International Protection

Asfar Darman, another displaced Yezidi, told ARA News: “I believe that there were no guarantees and protection from international powers under a UN resolution to protect the Yezidis in Shingal region, they will not go back home and this will encourage them leave Iraq heading the European countries in search of a better and secured life.”

“Unfortunately, Yezidis have lost confidence in everything, they would not easily come back to Shingal, especially if the situation continues as it is,” Darman concluded, saying “the international community should bear its responsibility to regain security and stability in the whole region.”

In August 2014, ISIS radicals took over the region of Shingal, causing a mass displacement of nearly 400,000 people to Duhok and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. Tens of thousands of Yezidis remained trapped in Mount Sinjar, suffering mass killings, kidnappings and rape cases, according to local and military sources. Also, more than 3000 Yezidi girls have been taken by the radical group as sex slaves.

On November 13, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, backed by an air cover from the US-led coalition forces, announced the liberation of the entire Yezidi district of Shingal in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh after fierce battles with ISIS extremists. The Kurdish forces have recently discovered more than five mass graves in the Yezidi region, where hundreds of Yezidi civilians have been summarily executed and buried by ISIS jihadis.

Reporting by: Ali Issa
Source: ARA News

http://aranews.net/2016/04/yezidis-not- ... njar-isis/

[Anthea]

Yezidi New Year 6766 celebrations held on first Wednesday after April 13

According to the Yezidi calendar, the creation of the world finishes on exactly April 13, and then the New Years starts.

The Yezidis’ New Year, Sarsal, coincides with the birthday of Archangel Malak Ta'us, whom the God sent for their defense. Yezidis start Sarsal by visiting the graves of their late relatives.

They take fruits and food to the cemetery. Then they lay table there and celebrate the New Year.

On the Eve of Sarsal women bake bread and biscuits and give the food out to the poor. They also decorate the entrance to their houses with flowers and give presents to each other. Then the women paint eggs with the colors of the Yezidi flag: red, white and yellow. The eggs are eaten eggshell scattered across the fields so that the harvest is abundant.

Yezidis celebrate it the same way as Armenians do: they lay a holiday table, decorate the house and the Christmas tree, visit each other’s place, as well as cook the same food as Armenians do, except for the pork.

Sinjar April 2011

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[Anthea]

Kubiš on Yezidi New Year Celebration:

They Have Suffered Immensely from Daesh Atrocities and Deserve to Live in Peace, Dignity, Freedom and in Full respect of their Rights

Baghdad, Iraq, 20 April 2016 – The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Ján Kubiš, extends his best wishes to the Yezidi community of Iraq on the occasion of their new year, and also remembers those Yezidi who have been killed and displaced as well as the suffering of the thousands of their women who have been kidnapped and who continue to be subjected to slavery by the Daesh terrorists.

“While this is a celebration of the new year by an ancient community, it is also a particularly painful reminder of the current suffering of the Yezidi people at the hands of the terrorists of Daesh since 2014,” the SRSG said.

“More than 3,500 women, mainly Yezidi, remain enslaved by the terrorists and subjected to horrific violations on a daily basis. Many Yezidi children were kidnapped, hundreds of men were killed and thousands others fled their homes to escape the onslaught of Daesh which singled out this community for particular savagery.”

The United Nations has consistently acknowledged that the human rights abuses committed by Daesh against Yezidi and other communities may constitute international crimes, including war crimes, against humanity and genocide.

The SRSG repeats his call on the Government of Iraq to ensure accountability for these terrible crimes and justice for the victims and survivors by granting to Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes, as well as to consider becoming a signatory to the Statute of the International Criminal Court or to refer the current conflict to the jurisdiction of the Court pursuant to its statute. By so doing the Government of Iraq will signal its seriousness of intent to the international community that any individual who may have committed atrocity crimes against the Iraqi people will be held accountable according to law.

The SRSG recalls the diversity of Iraq’s people is the country’s biggest source of wealth which must be protected and respected by its government and people. “The Yezidi are among the most vulnerable communities and have suffered immensely from Daesh’s atrocities. Like all minorities and the rest of the Iraqi people, they deserve to live in peace, dignity, freedom and in full respect of their rights.”

He notes that since the last observation of the Yezidi new year, the town of Sinjar, site of Daesh massacres of the Yezidi, was liberated in November 2015. The SRSG expresses his hope that the next celebration will be one in which those held captive by Daesh will celebrate in freedom and that all those who have been displaced as a result of conflict will have been able to return freely to their places of origin.

http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/kubi-y ... cities-and

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REMEMBER

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[Anthea]

MPs unanimously declare Yazidis and Christians victims of Isis genocide

A government attempt to prevent MPs from declaring that Islamic State’s treatment of Yazidis and Christians amounted to genocide was crushed on Wednesday, when the Commons voted unanimously to condemn their treatment and refer the issue to the UN security council.

It is almost unprecedented for MPs collectively to declare actions in a war as genocide.

Islamic State (Isis) has carried out a campaign of murder, violence and repression against Christians and the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority since seizing large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.

However the Foreign Office directed ministers and parliamentary aides to abstain, saying it was wrong for the government to prejudge the issue, or act as a jury on a case that may yet be referred to the international criminal court.

The United States Congress, the US administration, the European parliament and the Council of Europe have all declared the terror group’s treatment of the Yazidi community as genocide, but the Foreign Office legal department has a long-standing policy dating back to the passage of the Genocide Convention in 1948 of refusing to give a legal description to potential war crimes.

The government abstention policy was also designed to minimise the significance and size of the Commons majority, as well as to disassociate the executive from the MPs’ vote.

Tobias Ellwood, the Foreign Office minister, facing jeers and interruptions, said the immediate task was to compile evidence of the harrowing and unspeakable crimes, but it was wrong to declare now the nature of the crimes being committed against the Yazidis.

He said he personally believed genocide had taken place, but said this was a matter for the courts and not politicians. He added that any referral to the international criminal court required the support of the UN security council, and in 2014 such a reference was blocked by Russia and China.

“This ultimately is a matter for courts to decide. It is not for governments to be the prosecutor, the judge or indeed jury,” he said.

He insisted that regardless of the precise legal description of the crimes, justice would be brought to bear on those responsible, no matter how long it takes, insisting the government was not washing its hands of the issue.

However, he gave no undertaking that the government would act on the motion, and in the past ministers have chosen to ignore such backbench moves.

The shadow foreign office minister Diana Johnson responded to the vote by urging ministers to recognise the legitimacy of parliament and refer the issue to the UN immediately.

Philippe Sands QC, the prominent human rights lawyer, insisted that the government is “free to characterise atrocities of this kind as it sees fit... Its view will not bind a court.”

“This will be taken as a further sign that the Conservative government of the UK has abandoned this country’s long-standing commitment to the protection of human rights under the international rule of law,” he said.

Conservative MP Fiona Bruce said: “The proposers of this motion are here to insist that the overwhelming evidence of the atrocities of Daesh [Islamic State] in Syria and Iraq is recognised for the genocide it is and is considered as such by the UN security council and the international criminal court.

“This will support similar resolutions of other leading international and legislative bodies.”

She told how MPs had heard the “truly harrowing” personal testimony of a 16-year-old Yazidi girl, who was seized along with others from her community by Isis fighters and witnessed her father and brother killed in front of her.

The teenager had spoken of how every girl in her community over eight including herself was imprisoned and raped.

“She spoke of witnessing her friends being raped and hearing their screams, of seeing a girl aged nine being raped by so many men that she died.”

Bruce said MPs heard from another woman who had come directly from Syria and spoke of Christians being killed and tortured, of children being beheaded in front of their parents and of mothers who had seen their own children crucified.

Yazidis and Christians she said had been targeted explicitly because of their religion and ethnicity.

Ms Bruce said recognition of genocide brought obligations on the part of the international community to prevent, punish and protect.

Conservative MP Derek Thomas said: “The British people are horrified by what they hear and see regarding the treatment of these minority groups in Syria and in Iraq, and they rightly expect that this House will use whatever tools are available to us to work to bring this to an end and achieve peace in this troubled part of the world.

“A tool available to us today is to recognise these evil acts as genocide and to use our position as a permanent member of the UN security council so that this situation can be investigated by the international criminal court.”

Labour MP Stephen Pound (Ealing North) said it would be a “double discrimination” and a “double death in many ways” to fail to recognise as genocide the suffering of people targeted by IS.

Edward Leigh, the senior Conservative backbencher, said: “The attitude of the government up to now has been based on legal precedent. But I don’t believe that precedent in this case is enough, given the horrors that are going on in the world.

“There’s no point in the minister using his time in the House to condemn Daesh [Isis], to mention all the appalling acts that they’re doing and then saying at the end of the speech: ‘Well, I’m sorry, but because of all the legal precedent… because we the government think that it’s for the court to take the legal initiative, that we don’t think it is appropriate for the British government to take action.”

He added: “Enough is enough. I call on the government to act.”

Conservative MP Nus Ghani also suggested the world must act now to stop history repeating itself. She said: “We failed to prevent genocide in Bosnia. In Germany the Nazis were appeased while they targeted Jews. “The death cult of misfits that we face now cannot be allowed to get away with this for any longer.”

SNP MP Ian Blackford suggested that the UK should follow the example set by the Allied governments in 1942 when they made a joint statement condemning genocide.

“Just as we stood against genocide then and made sure that those responsible would face justice, we must now show the required level of leadership today when we are faced with genocide in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

“The British government must now urgently push the UN security council to immediately refer these crimes to the international criminal court.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... s-genocide

[Anthea]

Prosecute Yazidi genocide cases in Iraq

When Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Islamic State had committed genocide against the Yazidis, a small religious sect in Iraq, he received much approval. Yet no court has agreed to hear the Yazidis’ claims.

They have filed a case with the International Criminal Court, an organization based in The Hague, highlighting evidence found in the mass graves of murdered Yazidis, mainly teenaged boys and men, near the town of Shingal in Northern Iraq, after ISIS invaded in 2014. However, neither Iraq nor Syria has agreed to be governed by that court. What’s equally important, the United States and Russia have not agreed to come under the court’s jurisdiction either.

Members of the UN Security Council could vote to create a separate tribunal to prosecute war crimes and genocide for Iraq and Syria, as it created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. However, Security Council members are so divided that a new tribunal seems light years away.

The Yazidis could also file charges in the Iraq courts. Iraq has acceded to the Genocide Convention, meaning that it could try genocide cases as long as the alleged victims and perpetrators were in the country. Such a decision would test Iraq’s commitment to observing international law and upholding its own constitution, which states, “every individual has the right to enjoy life, security, and liberty. Deprivation or restriction of these rights is prohibited except in accordance with the law and based on a decision issued by a competent judicial authority.”

If the Iraqi court system could handle these cases in a transparent and professional manner, it would go a long way toward showing residents of the war-torn country that it could uphold the rule of law without trampling on civil rights. It would require treating prisoners humanely, handling evidence and witnesses with respect and professionalism, and not succumbing to bribery or intimidation.

That is a tall order. In 2007, Lee Hamilton, a former congressman and member of the Iraq Study Group, told a congressional hearing that members of the Iraqi Police Service “routinely engage in sectarian violence, including unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians.” In 2013, Human Rights Watch said Iraq’s criminal justice system is “plagued with arbitrariness and opacity.”

Before the invasion of ISIS, the US justice Department had been training police on investigative procedures, correction officers on human rights, and judges on analysis of evidence. This training should be revived to strengthen the entire system of criminal prosecution so that residents feel confident that they can both seek and receive justice.

The Yazidis’ genocide case would most likely be heard in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the alleged crimes occurred, and which has ratified Iraq’s constitution. Hundreds of Yazidis have returned to their villages near Mt. Sinjar since it was liberated last fall, including some of the girls and women who were kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. For those who are willing to identify the attackers, the government must be ready to take action. How war crimes are handled will speak volumes about the direction of the new Iraq that emerges after ISIS is beaten back.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/edi ... story.html

[Anthea]

Hope and dismay as Iraq's Yazidis mark their New Year

The Yazidis have been able to return to its most holy place, but US jets hover overhead and ISIS fighters lurk around the corner

LALISH, Iraq - Yazidis throng the narrow road leading to the temple here, the holiest site of the ancient religious community. Around the temple, the crowd thickens, and then streams through the gate of the old stony structure.

From a leafy courtyard, people push into the cavernous inside, a series of dimly lit, damp rooms, where they kiss brightly coloured cloth draped around tombs of departed spiritual leaders.

The men, women and children have come to celebrate 'Red Wednesday', the day that marks the beginning of the new year in the Yazidi calendar. Piled into minibuses, packed into the back of pickup trucks or cramped into ancient Opel Sedans, thousands of Yazidis from all over the Kurdish region have poured into Lalish for the occasion.

New Years is a rare opportunity to celebrate for the embattled and traumatised community.

The battered old Opels are the same make that can still be seen discarded by the side on the winding road descending into the town of Sinjar, abandoned by Yazidis desperate to escape when the Islamic State (IS) group stormed into their heartland in northern Iraq in August 2014. The militants intended to eradicate the Yazidis in Iraq, whom they consider devil worshippers.

ISIS fighters killed an estimated 1,300 men and old women that could not escape its rapid advance, and abducted more than 5,000 women and children. Of those, around 3,500 still remain in captivity, the women abused as sex slaves and the children indoctrinated in the group’s schools.

IS has been pushed back by Kurdish forces, but the militants still occupy many Yazidi villages on the Nineveh plains, and are still close enough to Sinjar to fire rockets filled with poison gas into the ruined town. Most Yazidis continue to live in refugee camps around the nearby city of Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan.

As the Yazidis gather at Lalish two years later, the roar of circling coalition war planes can be heard, a reminder that IS still menaces nearby. The trauma of their loss remains pervasive even during the celebrations.

"The sorrow is in the heart of everyone here," said Qasim Rasho, a withered 79-year-old wearing a white kandura and a chequered headscarf, who sits on the grass next to the road leading to the temple. Like most people here, he has lost family members to the IS onslaught.

"I am sad even today. Many of our women and girls are still with Daesh. We won't be happy until all of them return," agrees 44-year-old Badal Hamo Ase from the village of Khanasoor near Sinjar, which continues to lie empty after being liberated from IS in late 2014.

An identity reaffirmed

IS’s murderous attack on the secluded community has heightened its sense of a common identity, says Mirza Diyanni, a Yazidi from Germany who works for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and who is involved in the efforts to free the captive women and children. Lalish, a small hamlet nestled between to hillsides, has become an important focal point of this revival, and Yazidis flock to the holy site throughout the year.

"The people that have been rescued from Daesh come to Lalish immediately," says Diyanni, standing in the temple courtyard. "Even for the young generation, which isn't that informed about the religion, the religious festivities and holidays are very important. The Yezidi identity is becoming more pronounced, not in a religious sense, but as a social identity.

Red Wednesday now draws more visitors to Lalish than before the IS attack, which was declared a genocide by the US government last month.

"Last year, there were fewer people here, it was the first New Years after Daesh came. But today, there are more visitors than ever before," says Hussein Hassan, a 54-year-old, who lost 50 members of his extended family.

Most of the visitors are young, and men and women with trendy haircuts and fashionable clothes are busy snapping selfies on their smart phones.

"Religion is more important to us now, as life has become more difficult," says Ghaleb Dardwesh, 19, who has come to Lalish with a group of friends.

There are no ceremonies to mark the Yazidi New Year, and the crowd that jammed the road through Lalish and pushed into the temple could have passed as revellers at an amusement park. Only occasionally the custodians of the temple could be seen in white turbans and robes, moving amongst the crowd or slouched against the walls, with older Yazidis lining up to pay their respects.

The young were busy turning religious rituals into games. In a room deep inside the temple, a group of youth are clustered around a simple stone altar, noisily queueing for their turn to toss a piece of cloth onto the altar's ledge.

In Yazidi custom, a successful throw will bring seven years of good fortune, but to the participants that belief seemed to hold little more value than the prizes won at a fairground shooting gallery.

In the adjacent room, visitors can throw pebbles at two holes in the ground. Hitting the right one guarantees you a place in heaven, the tradition goes, hitting the other lands you in hell. Few take this game of high stakes seriously.

Reminders everywhere

Within the carnival atmosphere, the reminders of recent horrors are not difficult to find.

With KRG backing, a small group of Yazidi activists have been smuggling Yazidi women out of IS captivity within months of the Sinjar attack. One of the key players in this deadly game of cat and mouse stands next to Diyanni in the temple courtyard. Known to the Yazidis as Abu Shijaa, the bespectacled, middle aged man with an avuncular demeanour commands huge respect in the community.

A constant flow of men come to shake his hand and have their pictures taken with him, some kiss him on the cheek in gratitude. Abu Shijaa and his partners have managed to free hundreds of women and children from ISIS strongholds of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Mosul, but their work has become more difficult of late.

"It’s harder to rescue Yazidis now. Daesh is using the hisbah to keep the women under observation," says Abu Shijaa, referring to the female members of ISIS’s religious police. Yazidi boys that are kept apart from their mothers in ISIS schools are almost impossible to smuggle out, and some of the smugglers who have tried have been captured and killed, he says.

ISIS is only the latest in a series of attacks on the Yazidis, who are considered devil worshippers by hard-line Muslims. In 2007, a coordinated series of bomb blasts in Yazidi towns near Mosul killed 500 people, the second biggest terror attack after 9/11. Many Yazidis are convinced that Iraq offers them no future, and are determined to make the perilous journey to Europe.

If they have their way, the huge crowds ushering in New Years at Lalish could soon be a thing of the past. But community that has been persecuted might not be so easy to displace from its ancestral lands.

"There have been seventy-two pogroms against us, we will survive this too," Abu Shijaa says defiantly.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hope- ... 1053475328

[Anthea]

Putting ISIS to sleep:

12 year old Yazidi girl uses sleeping pills to escape terror group

A 12-year-old Yazidi girl secretly slipped sleeping pills into her Islamic State captor’s tea to escape. The girl and her aunt were being held as slaves by the jihadist group west of Mosul, before they were able to escape to Kurdish-controlled areas.

The escape was confirmed by Vian Dakhil, a Kurdish Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, who told the Kurdish BasNews agency that a 12-year-old girl and her 17-year-old aunt had managed to escape from their Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) captives by spiking their captors tea with sleeping pills.

Dakhil said that the two girls were being held by Islamic State forces at a house in the Tel Afar district, which is west of Mosul, Iraqi’s third largest city. They were held for about four months before the pair decided to make their daring escape.

The Kurdish politician revealed that the girls had asked their guards to give them sleeping pills to help them get off to sleep. “Then, they put the medicine in militants’ tea and secured their escape after they fell asleep,” Dakhil said.

After the jihadists dosed off, the girls were able to make their escape to areas held by Kurdish forces. The 12-year-old girl was reunited with her mother and sister, but two or three of her siblings are still being held by Islamic State forces.

Many of those kept captive by the jihadist terror group have not been so lucky. Women held captive are often kept as sex slaves, while those who refuse are killed.

"At least 250 girls have so far been executed by IS for refusing to accept the practice of sexual jihad, and sometimes the families of the girls were also executed for rejecting to submit to IS's request," Said Mamuzini, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official from Mosul, told BasNews.

Ghayas Surchi, a PUK official from Mosul, told BasNews that human rights are being widely violated in all territories being held by the jihadist group, particularly the rights of women as they are seen as commodities and they have no choice in choosing their spouses.

The Yazidi people are a religious minority in Iraq. They first fell victim to IS in August 2014, as the terror group overwhelmed Mount Sinjar, the homeland of thousands of Yazidis.

A UN report published in January stated that Islamic State forces are holding around 3,500 people as slaves in Iraq, the majority of whom are women and children from the Yazidi community.

The terror group argues that capturing Yazidi women is justified because they are not Muslims. According to a pamphlet released by Islamic State at the end of 2014, members are permitted to have sex with Yazidi women, especially if those captured are virgins. If the woman is not a virgin, the manual reads that “her uterus must be purified" before intercourse.

According to the UN, Islamic State jihadists have abducted thousands of women and girls as young as 12 years old, selling them as sex slaves or giving them to fighters as rewards.

https://www.rt.com/news/340574-isis-sle ... ls-yazidi/

[Anthea]

Funeral held for Yezidi girls killed trying to escape ISIS captivity

DUHOK, Kurdistan Region - A group of three Yezidi girls fled Islamic State (ISIS) captivity and tried to reach the Kurdistan Region. However on the way two were killed in a bomb blast and the third was wounded.

Their families have already held funerals even though they have yet to recover the bodies.

"We don’t know where their bodies are. We asked tribes and government to help us find their bodies, but neither government nor the tribes have helped us," said the uncle of one of the dead girls.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/220420162

[Anthea]

Life after ISIS: war victims require more support

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Tens of thousands of victims of the Islamic State, many women and children, have been left abandoned after their suffering. Society’s attitude towards the victims needs to change, activists and experts warned at the Women: A Gate to Freedom conference in the Kurdistan Region on Sunday.

“The society doesn’t accept the victim as a normal person. This is especially true for the women who have been raped by Daesh gunmen,” psychologist Yusuf Othman told Rudaw English.

He further explained how individuals judge victims while imagining their own scenario of what might have happened to people under ISIS rule, including rape, torture, and sexual enslaving of female victims.

Othman said that women who escaped from ISIS continue to be victimized.

“People don’t see us anymore they don’t want to hear us, they are just curious about the terrorists. That hurts my feelings,” he quoted one of the victims saying during a therapy session.

Othman explained that the victim said she was sick of the questions her family, relatives, friends, and even media ask her.

“They all want to know how many men have raped me and how they treated me,” he quoted her as saying. She complained to him that people continue to ask her about the ISIS militants more than asking about her own feelings.

The lack of comprehensive and systematic support programs to help war victims, according to the Kurdish psychologist, will hamper the development of Kurdish society as a whole.

“We have studied historical cases of nations and communities that have been affected by war,” Othman explained. “We need to do a lot more to limit the harm of a war that already occurred and changed people’s lives.”

One aim of today’s conference in Erbil was to raise awareness.

Local and international humanitarian aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been offering healing programs, including medical and psychological treatment, and workshops to the victims of war inside the refugee camps. Their services have especially focused on the Yezidi women who have been used as sex slaves by ISIS since the radical fighters went on a rampage of murder, looting, rape, and abduction of girls and women after attacking the Yezidi town of Shingal in August 2014.

Activists believe the aid programs are far from enough.

An Erbil women’s organization, Twanasazi (Enhancing Women), that organized Sunday’s conference in cooperation with the Jordanian Women Against Violence Association, told Rudaw that it has offered a 2-year program in Khanke, a Yezidi refugee camp in Duhok, most of whose residents were held captive by ISIS for months, some more than a year.

The services, according to program manager Jwan Pshtiwan, include humanitarian, social, legal, and medical help, but she revealed that much of the aid has been halted due to the financial crisis the Kurdistan Region is currently facing.

Dr. Othman laments that although NGOs, local organizations, and activists all are trying to help the victims, there is no systematic centralized body or mechanism to offer long-term support to the war victims.

He also believes that society needs more educational programs to teach people how to deal with victims of war violence.

“We must start with teaching our children in schools how to understand and accept the victims,” Othman explained. “The main obstacle is the society and not the victim.”

Khzer Doumli, a scholar and activist working on Yezidi cases, shared similar concerns.

“Unfortunately aid programs for war victims and rescued Yezidi women are for a limited, short term, while we are in great need of long-term physical and mental programs,” Doumli said.

Another problem, Doumli noted, is the gap that has been created between the victims and humanitarian organizations as many of the aid programs were put on hold.

Speaking about children who experienced the brutality of ISIS, Doumli said there has not been a single program that would deal with only children’s problems and would consider them as victims of the war.

Kurdish Yezidi lawmaker Vian Khalil, said in a tweet on April 22 that so far, “We have 2745 orphans since #ISIL attacked the Yezidis in 2014 & over 1000 children still in ISILs brainwashing camps.”

She also noted that at least 500,000 Yezidi men, women, and children have been displaced and become refugees since 2014.

According to Doumli, at least 2000 Yezidi women are still in captivity, held by Islamic State militants; more than 1600 women have so far managed to escape ISIS.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/240420164

[Anthea]

DNA tools needed to identify Yazidis slaughtered by ISIS: Iraqi lawmaker

Iraq’s only female Yazidi lawmaker has said that documentation of ISIS’ “genocide” against her own people is continuing, but far more needs to be done.

Vian Dakhil, who is known for her fervent plea over the plight of the Yazidi minority group whom she belongs to, said that efforts to identify bodies found in more than 20 mass graves have been hampered for a simple reason: there is no DNA testing equipment in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region.

The killing of between 2,000 to 5,000 men in a northern town known for its Yazidi population after a surprise attack by ISIS militants in August 2014 has now become known as a Sinjar massacre. While the men were killed, thousands of women and children were taken and enslaved by ISIS. Other fled to the nearby Mount Sinjar.

“We do not have specialized equipment and medical material specialized to test DNA of the corpses found in the mass graves,” said Dakhil. The lawmaker is a member of the Baghdad parliament’s Kurdistan Alliance.

“There needs to be DNA testing to prove the identity of these victims,” she said.

Due to the need, the parliamentarian said that Kurdistan’s regional government in Erbil has asked Iraq’s health ministry for help.

While the Baghdad ministry “expressed their willingness,” she said, actions still fall short.

Iraq’s capital has recently witnessed large protests urging the prime minister to push forward with reforms to tackle corruption.

“It seems they are busy with many other things.”

An official from Yazda, a US-based NGO team helping the Yazidis document crimes against their minority told Al Arabiya English that another NGO, the Bosnia-based International Committee on Missing Persons, had partnered with the Kurdish government in Erbil and provided the essential equipment.

“They have all the required DNA testing equipment necessary,” said Andrew Slater, who heads up Yazda’s documentation team.

He added: “As I understand it, all DNA samples will be sent to their laboratories in Europe for testing.”

In January, Yazda released a report confirming 22 mass grave sites with Yazidi bodies. The report described 13 other sites located in territories liberated from ISIS but has not visited them yet.

“In over a year since the liberation of the north side of the mountain, no public report that Yazda is aware of has been issued by the [Kurdish government] on the mass graves,” the report said. “No findings of any documentation efforts have been published.”

The report also called for a “full and transparent account of the crimes against humanity around Sinjar.”

On Nov. 13 last year, forces from the Iraqi Kurdish government freed Sinjar after a major offensive against ISIS. The operation was led by Peshmerga forces with US air support and the help from Yazidi fighters.

Asked if a report detailing crimes against the Yazidi people has been made public, Slater, the NGO official, said “we are not aware of any other reports published on this issue yet.”

However, the Iraqi lawmaker described investigations to document crimes against her minority group as still “ongoing.”

“There are more than 20 graves that were discovered in Sinjar, mostly of people who were executed, either from behind or in another brutal way. Many of them were children, and there were old people,” said Dakhil.

Dakhil said the Kurdish government had provided more help to the Yazidis than Baghdad had.

She urged the government in the Iraqi capital to “adopt” the Yazidi’s plight in order to make the issue resonate and gain more attention in the international community.

The Kurdish government was so far able to liberate 2,150 women from ISIS captivity, and was looking to rescue 3,500 more, she said.

There are also around 1,060 children - whose ages range from 8 to 12 - that are “being brainwashed in ISIS’ military camps.”

Dakhil defended her country, saying that Iraq was “not a failed state.” But she urged Baghdad to do more to help the Yazidis.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspec ... tU.twitter

[Anthea]

Scarred Yazidi boys escape Islamic State combat training

QADIYA, Iraq When nine-year-old Murad got the chance to flee from Islamic State - the group that repeatedly raped his mother and slaughtered or enslaved thousands from his Yazidi minority - he hesitated.

So powerful was the indoctrination during his 20-month captivity in Iraq and Syria that the boy told his mother he wanted to stay at the camp where Islamic State had trained him to kill "infidels", including his own people.

Now in the relative safety of Kurdish-controlled territory, Murad's mother told Reuters how she had struggled to persuade her son - like other Yazidi boys being prepared for battle - to escape earlier this month with her and his little brother.

"My son's brain was changed and most of the kids were saying to their families 'Go, we will stay'," she said, declining to give her name. "Until the last moment before we left, my son was saying 'I will not come with you'."

Yazidi boys appear to be part of broader efforts by Islamic State to create a new generation of fighters loyal to the group's ideology and inured to its extreme violence. The training often leaves them scarred, even after returning home.

Islamic State, known by its opponents in Arabic as Daesh, captured Murad, his mother and brother in August 2014 at their village near the Iraqi town of Sinjar. During that offensive, the radical Sunni Muslim group massacred, enslaved and raped thousands of Yazidis, whom they consider to be devil-worshippers.

The United States launched air strikes against the militants partly to save the survivors and last month said the attacks on Yazidis, whose faith combines elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, and other groups amounted to genocide.

More than a third of the 5,000 Yazidis captured in 2014 have escaped or been smuggled out, but activists say hundreds of boys are still held.

Dressed in a long brown skirt and matching headscarf, the mother described how Murad had finally agreed to escape, allowing people smugglers to spirit the family by a convoluted route to a refugee camp near the northern Iraqi city of Duhok where they are living now.

Murad, wearing a jersey of the Spanish football club Real Madrid, sat with his mother on the floor of a spartan trailer in al-Qadiya camp, twiddling his thumbs and resisting answering questions.

BATTLING THE INFIDELS

Most of the time Murad's mother managed to stay with her two sons as Islamic State shuffled them around cities and towns in its "caliphate" spanning the borders of Iraq and Syria. These included its de-facto capitals Mosul and Raqqa, as well as the ancient city of Palmyra which has since fallen to Syrian government forces.

"They were teaching the children how to fight and go to war to battle the infidels," the mother said, adding that those to be killed included Shi'ite Muslims, the peshmerga forces of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Islamic State dressed the boys in the same long robes they wore, and trained them how to use guns and knives. "They were assessing them for how well they had learned to fight. Daesh then showed the families videos of killing. Among them they saw their sons also taking part."

Islamic State also forced Murad to pray, study the Koran and sit through extremist religious lessons, according to his mother, who said she had been beaten as well as raped by at least 14 men.

TAUGHT TO HATE

A 16-year-old boy taken from the same village south of Sinjar recounted similar treatment. He spent two months in a religious school where Islamic State taught its ultra-hardline ideology which labels most outsiders as infidels and has been denounced by senior Muslim authorities.

"They told us, 'You are Yazidis and you are infidels. We want to convert you to the true religion so you can go to heaven'," said the teenager, who withheld his name and wrapped his head in a scarf, fearing retribution against his brother and father still under Islamic State rule.

The teenager said he was made to work in a sweatshop with other boys, sewing military clothes for the fighters.

Around 750 other children have escaped in recent months but a few thousand more remain missing, according to Yazidi activists Khairy Ali Ibrahim and Fasel Kate Hasoo, who document crimes against their community.

Twenty-five children who escaped from Islamic State training camps have since passed through Qadiya, 10 km (6 miles) south of the Turkish border, but only six remain, they said. The rest have sought refuge in Europe, joining the wave of migrants fleeing conflict across the region.

READJUSTING

Murad's family escaped when the fighter who had "purchased" his mother left the house where she and the boys were staying to get food. Put in contact with the people smugglers by a friend, they spent the night at a safe house before a nine-hour journey by motorbike to territory held by Syrian Kurds.

After three nights in the town of Kobani on the Turkish border, they made their way to Iraqi Kurdistan.

For boys who have reached relative safety, new burdens await them and their families. Most Yazidis have had to spend small fortunes on smugglers' costs to rescue loved ones - Murad's family raised $24,000 to get the three home.

Many families take small loans from relatives and neighbors, who later demand repayment. Promises from charities and government agencies to help cover those costs have fallen through, they say.

There are also psychological costs.

Murad's mother said she could tell her boys had been traumatized by the ordeal.

Her younger son, five-year-old Emad, speaks little but plays peek-a-boo and trots in and out of the room. Murad is clearly more affected: he rarely smiles, struggles to maintain eye contact, and fidgets constantly.

The teenager who was put to work in the sweatshop says he was mature enough to brush off Islamic State's brutality.

"I was dealing with them only because I was afraid, but now that I'm back, I'm just like I was before," he said. A cousin, though, later admitted his reintegration had not been easy, declining to go into details.

Children introduced to Islamic State's ideology are likely to consider it normal and defend its practices, according to Quilliam, a London-based anti-extremism think tank.

"They are unable to contribute constructively to their societies because they do not develop the ability to socialize," it said in a report last month.

The Yazidi children at Qadiya need regular psychological treatment which remains out of reach, said the activist Hasoo.

"Most of the boys after fleeing tried to implement Daesh's ideas," he said. "There were cases of children wanting to kill one of their friends in the camp. Others would play out the actions they had been trained on."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-midea ... SKCN0XN19Q

[Anthea]

Teenaged Yezidi girls escape ISIS but succumb to landmines

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The bodies of two Yezidi girls who were reportedly killed by a landmine while escaping the Islamic State in Kirkuk on March 14, still remain in a field that separates Peshmerga frontlines from ISIS positions in the area.

Relatives of the two victims told Rudaw they had asked the Kurdish authorities for assistance to collect the bodies which apparently remained in a minefield that was within the reach of ISIS sniper fire.

“If they allow us we could go there and take the bodies of our girls,” said Saeed Kocho, the uncle of one of the victims.

Kocho said they had already been in touch with the Peshmerga commanders in the area and received assurances that the relatives would be provided protection to collect the bodies.

Katrin Ilias, 20, Almas Khalaf, 11 and Lamia Haji, 19 escaped ISIS captivity earlier this month. But only Lamia survived the tragic mine explosion that instantly killed the other two girls.

Army officials in Iraq say that ISIS militants have over the past years acquired expertise in planting landmines and explosives around and in the areas that they control in order to block potential outside offensives to retake the areas.

Saeed said his niece had called their family only the night before they escaped the militants and told them that she and her friends would soon reach Peshmerga positions in the area.

But instead of reunion, Saeed said he received a call from security in Kirkuk who told him to collect the cellphone of his niece, apparently taken to the police by Lamia.

“They just told me that she had been killed by a landmine,” Saeed said.

He said around 20 of his close relatives had been killed or abducted by the militants but “losing Katrin was more devastating than losing everything because she was so close to being free,” he told Rudaw, choking on his tears.

At the mourning ceremony for Katrin, Rudaw also met Nadiya Murad, a Yezidi activist and a relative of the unfortunate girl.

“It was devastating for all of us to see Katrin being killed so tragically,” Nadiya told Rudaw. “I wished we could see her among us again.”

Lamia Haji who escaped the explosion unharmed has reunited with her family after she was abducted in August 2014 in her village of Kocho near the Yezidi town of Shingal.

It has been increasingly difficult to produce an accurate data about the number of abducted and assaulted Yezidi women, often due to the sensitivity of the cases with victims unwilling to share their horrific experiences.

But according to a government office, which was set up in the Kurdistan Region to help locate and bring back the abducted Yezidis, of the 6,255 people who were kidnapped, 3,878 are still in ISIS captivity, with nearly 1,800 of them being women and children.

The Yezidi lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, Vian Dakhil, told Rudaw in December that nearly 5,820 Yezidis are still held captive, while 2,200 have been rescued or have escaped captivity.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/26042016

[Anthea]

Shingal a ruined city, declares Iraqi parliament

The Iraqi parliament has declared Shingal a ruined city in today’s parliamentary session, a Kurdish Yezidi lawmaker told Rudaw on Thursday.

“After six months of collecting evidence with the cooperation of the Nineveh provincial council, today the Iraqi parliament voted on recognizing Shingal’s destruction and the majority of the votes supported declaring Shingal a ruined city,” said Vian Dakhil, an MP who is a Yezidi Kurd.

Dakhil, who was responsible for the motion before parliament, said that 85% of Shingal is destroyed and the Iraqi government is committed to participating in the renovation of the city.

ISIS attacked the predominantly Kurdish Yezidi town of Shingal in August 2014, triggering a grim humanitarian crisis as thousands of locals fled to the safety of nearby Mount Shingal where they were trapped for weeks. The militants unleashed a spree of violence, murdering the men and raping or kidnapping women or girls, many later sold as sex slaves.

On November 12, 2015, vowing that “no other flag will rise in [Shingal],” Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani declared the town liberated from ISIS, and congratulated Yezidi Kurds on the victory.

In February, Iraq’s parliament called on authorities to dedicate a special budget for the urgent reconstruction of Anbar, calling it “a ruined province” after it was recaptured from ISIS militants last month.

With the similar decision naming Shingal a ruined city, it is expected that a special budget will also be dedicated to the city’s reconstruction.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/280420161

[Anthea]

Yazidi woman escapes Islamic State but her 12-year-old daughter remains ‘married’

DUHOK, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’,— It has been just 10 days since Hanif found freedom from ISIS.

Freedom from a long ordeal of sexual abuse, beatings and forced labour at the hands of Islamic extremists as she was “sold” 14 times, traded from one man to another like a common commodity.

But despite a joyous reunion with husband Homdi, her daring escape has not ended the family nightmare.

The couple’s four daughters — ages 12, 15, 17 and 19 — remain under the control of ISIS, “married” to the group’s fighters.

Even their youngest girl.

“They tortured us and assaulted us on every level,” she says, speaking through an interpreter.

Hanif is among almost 16,000 people, mostly Yazidi Kurds, who have taken refuge at the Rwanga Community Camp, just outside the city of Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Hanif related her story this week to journalists from the Star and CTV News.

She is weary and appears burdened by emotion that is too much to bear. She avoids the worst details of the humiliating treatment and abuse. But even this account is horrifying, as Hanif describes the abuse she endured in the grim knowledge that her daughters continue to suffer.

Like many in the camp, Hanif’s horrors began almost two years ago as Islamic extremists began murderous advances that had Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion mostly based in Kurdish Iraq, in the crosshairs.

Once taken captive, the women were forced to convert to Islam or be killed.

“We didn’t have any choice but to convert, all four of them were married against their will. All of the captive Yazidi girls were forced to do the same,” she says.

She pauses and looks at her husband, who has been sitting silent, listening.

“They assaulted us a lot,” she says.

“The worst part was when they raped us and when they took our girls and raped.”

She describes how ISIS organized auctions for the captured women. “I was bought by Saudi, Libyan and Kuwaiti men,” she says.

The couple’s two boys — Murad, 9, and Imad, 5 — were taken to mosques and given lessons in the Qu’ran. “They were training me as to how I was going to pray,” Murad says. Despite the prompting of his father, the oldest boy refuses to say anything more about the experience.

But Hanif makes plain that she feared for what lay in store for the two boys.

“I was very afraid because I saw ISIS take other children for training. They used to come to my kids and show them the weapons and how they can use them,” Hanif says.

Achingly, she was allowed a brief reunion with the daughters for three days. That was a year ago. There has been no word since.

Hanif speaks with obvious pride of her daughters. She describes them as smart, good in school — her oldest had plans to go to university — and strong-willed. Strong enough, she hopes, to allow them to survive this terrible ordeal. But she fears they have been “destroyed.”

She reaches for a smartphone to show visitors pictures of her two eldest girls. It is one of the few reminders she has of them.

“I feel sad when I see this photo. I remembered the things that they did to us against our will,” she says.

Her escape was daring. Telling the house owner she was going to the outside kitchen, she slipped away to a nearby home and asked for help. Using a phone, she dialed a number that put her in touch with an underground network that helps ISIS captives just like her.

She was told to take a cab ride to a safe house and she did, even as her boys protested.

“My two boys were crying and saying that ISIS will catch us and kill us for escaping, but I had already made up my mind and I was not going to go back,” Hanif says.

“I never thought that I was ever going to escape.”

Hanif speaks sitting on a pillow, her two boys by her side, in the sparse living area that doubles as a bedroom at night. A television plays in the corner and on it U.S. President Barack Obama is making a speech pledging more troops to help combat the “urgent threat” of ISIS. “This remains a difficult fight,” Obama tells his German audience.

Few places know that difficult fight more than this makeshift hillside community. There are thousands of heartbreaking stories here. Tales of loss, tragedy and lives stuck in limbo.

And the children who wander the gravel lanes of the camp, who curiously crowd around visitors, trying out their halting English, speak to another generation in peril unless the crisis is resolved.

Most of those at this camp are Yazidis, persecuted by ISIS fighters, who view this ancient religion as worshipping the devil.

The Islamic extremists began their assault on Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in August, 2014. Some 300,000 were forced to flee.

As two Canadian journalists leave the tiny home, the husband, Homdi, appeals to them to deliver a message on the family’s behalf.

“I appreciate anyone or any organization who is coming and helping … our case to release our children out of ISIS’ hands,” Homdi says.

“They’re my children, they’re my sisters. I want to get them back, all. I want to release all of them. We want to live in peace.”

http://ekurd.net/yazidi-12-year-daughte ... 2016-05-02