Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Yazidi genocide: landmark guilty verdict for ISIS

The genocide verdict brought recently by a German court against an Iraqi member of Islamic State for crimes including the murder of a five-year-old Yazidi girl is a landmark decision which will clear the way for similar prosecutions. That this verdict was even possible was thanks to a detailed (and remarkably speedy) report in 2016 which established that violence against the Yazidi community in northwest Iraq had amounted to genocide

Taha al-Jumailly was sentenced to life imprisonment after the court heard that the jihadist enslaved the five-year-old in 2015, chaining her up and leaving her to die of thirst.

The concept of international crimes is relatively new, stemming from the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). These are understood as “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole”. At the top of this list is the crime of genocide. This is defined, in Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The development of international criminal law is deeply rooted in the atrocities committed during the second world war in Europe and Asia, brought to light at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals. These two pioneering tribunals established the individual criminal responsibility of heads of state and military leaders for gross violations of human rights. This was rapidly endorsed by the 1946 resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, and followed by the Genocide Convention in 1948.

The significance of these developments is that international law seldom holds individuals responsible for violating it. It has only done so previously in instances of piracy and slave-trading. Without this structural tool of individual responsibility for a heinous crime, it would not be possible to bring perpetrators to justice and deter such behaviour in the future.

Genocide has come to be known as the “crime of crimes”, but it is also the most difficult to prove because it does not only require intent, but specific intent to destroy an identifiable group of people.

Establishing genocide as a crime

The guilty verdict against al-Jumailly was only possible because of the work done prior to the case which established the occurrence of genocide in relation to the crime committed by this individual: the Independent International Commission of Inquiry reported to the Human Rights Council in 2016 that genocide was being carried out against the Yazidi community by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In its 40-page report it established that ISIS had sought to destroy the Yazidis. It had done this through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm. All of these are prohibited acts under the Rome Statute.

In April 2020, al-Jumailly was charged with crimes under the German Code of Crimes against international law, which implemented the Rome Statute into German criminal law, for his act of buying a Yazidi woman and her child from an IS fighter and subsequently providing them with insufficient food and prohibiting them from practising their religion. The child later died from being tied to a window and left unprotected in a temperature of 50°C as a punishment for bed-wetting.

Rare cases of justice

Iraq is not party to the Rome Statute – and therefore the International Criminal Court (ICC) has no jurisdiction over these crimes. Cases must be held in a domestic court of a country that is signatory to the Rome Statute or recognises a special provision in international law, known as universal jurisdiction, through its customary law.

Ordinarily, German courts would not have had jurisdiction in this case as the accused was a foreign national and the crime took place outside Germany (in Iraq). But because Germany recognises universal jurisdiction, its court was able to hear the case.

In practice, few countries have ever exercised this jurisdiction. Previous examples include the arrest in London on an international warrant of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed during his regime from 1973 to 1990. Others prosecuted have included individuals in Guatemala and Spain.

But it is important that states do this – since international crimes do not get prosecuted enough and are often only prosecuted as offences in national criminal law. For example in March 2020, an Iraqi court sentenced Mohammed Rashid Sahab, also a former ISIS militant, to death for “repeatedly raping a Yazidi woman whom he held captive” and had forced to marry him. There was no mention of genocide, however.

While it is possible for the UN Security Council to refer cases to the ICC, geopolitics has all-too-often intervened to prevent unity among the permanent members of the Security Council. This has effectively meant that this route to prosecution of international crimes is closed. So, given the extremely sensitive and highly political nature of prosecution of international crimes, the German court has taken an important step by assuming universal jurisdiction in this case.

https://theconversation.com/yazidi-geno ... ice-173043

[Anthea]

Turkish strike kills Yezidi commander
Wladimir van Wilgenburg

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An alleged Turkish strike on Tuesday in Iraq’s disputed district of SInjar (Shingal) killed a local commander of the Yezidi (Ezidi) Protection Units (YBS) group, made up of members of the beleaguered religious minority

At the time of reporting, it was still unclear whether the strike was carried out by the Turkish military’s warplanes or its drones.

“We condemn the Turkish bombing in Khanesor town today, which targeted Marwan Badal, commander of YBS, who was killed in the bombing,” Murad Ismael, co-founder of the Yezidi-focused human rights organization Yazda and also President of the Sinjar Academy, told Kurdistan 24.

“We also condemn the silence of the Iraqi government and the international community in the face of the repeated and illegal Turkish strikes.”

“If there is a security problem in Sinjar,” he continued, “the Iraqi government must find solutions to it, but it has miserably failed in resolving the security and administration issues in an acceptable arrangement as part of the Sinjar Agreement,” referring to a still-unimplemented deal signed over a year ago by Erbil and Baghdad to bring security and administrative order to the district.

The federal government and the autonomous Kurdistan Region announced in October 2020 that they had reached common ground with Baghdad officials to restore security and administrative order in Sinjar, where various competing armed groups remain active.

The YBS consists of members of the Yezidi religious minority group and is seen as close associates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has led a decades-long insurgency against Ankara for Kurdish rights in Turkey.

In September, Turkish airstrikes also targeted a YBS checkpoint.

In mid-August, Turkey carried out airstrikes for two days in a row in which civilians and YBS members were killed.

The 2014 ascendance of ISIS and its subsequent violent assault on Sinjar (Shingal) led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Yezidis. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Region, while others resettled to neighboring countries in the region or to Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the warzone, where they were subjected to atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the extremist group for years. ISIS militants forced women and girls into sexual slavery; kidnapped their children; forced religious conversions; executed scores of men; and abused, sold, and trafficked women and girls across the areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Yezidi organizations including Yazda roundly welcomed a German court ruling yesterday that convicted Iraqi ISIS militant Taha al-Jumailly on charges of genocide against members of the Yezidis (Ezidi) religious minority starting in 2014.

This is first verdict worldwide to specifically use the label "genocide," an important legal distinction. In the past, ISIS members have been sentenced to jail on the basis of individual crimes against Yezidis, but not genocide.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... ted-Sinjar

[Anthea]

Turkey strikes Yazidi militia in Iraq

Marwan Badal, who commanded the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), was killed in a Turkish airstrike in Sinjar in western Iraq. The attack was carried out on his vehicle via an armed drone. Badal’s two sons were with him at the time and survived the attack, according to Kurdish media outlets

The YBS is comprised of members of the Yazidi ethno-religious community, and Sinjar is a predominantly Yazidi area. Various armed groups operate in Sinjar, including affiliates of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as the Kurdistan Region’s peshmerga security forces.

The preponderance of armed groups is one reason pushing Yazidis to leave Iraq.

Sinjar is technically administered by the federal Iraqi government but is also claimed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The peshmerga defeated the Islamic State there in 2015, and the area became governed by the KRG. In 2017, the federal government resumed control.

The YBS is an ally of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in neighboring Syria. Turkey considers the YPG to be a terrorist organization and the Syrian offshoot of the PKK. The YPG shares the ideology of the PKK but denies direct links. Turkey therefore attacks the YBS in Sinjar from time to time.

The YBS is part of the PMU, and these militias are officially part of Iraq’s security forces. The Turkish drone attack therefore targeted an Iraqi federal armed force.

Turkey did not immediately confirm it was behind the drone attack. The Iraqi military's Security Media Cell condemned the strike as an infringement on Iraqi sovereignty in a Facebook post. The cell named Turkey in the post.

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/20 ... litia-iraq

[Anthea]

Yezidi burial ceremony

KRG pledges ongoing support, urges Sinjar Agreement implementation

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – At a solemn event on the outskirts of the disputed city of Sinjar (Shingal), a representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) reiterated his government's support of the Yezidi (Ezidi) religious minority whose local population has remained decimated since the 2014 ascent of ISIS in Iraq.

The comments were made at a ceremony held on Thursday in the village of Kojo to bury the remains of 41 villagers killed in ISIS' brutal massacre of the local Yezidi community as the terrorist group overran Sinjar in 2014.

In the presence of officials from the federal and regional governments, Yezidi clerics, families of the victims, and local residents, KRG Coordinator for International Advocacy Dindar Zebari spoke at the event, reading a letter on behalf of Prime Minister Masrour Barzani that called the attack on Sinjar “of one of the most appalling acts in history.”

In doing so, he said, ISIS violated “all human norms and human rights principles towards the innocent populations of these areas,” adding that, despite such immeasurable hardship, “the Yezidis were resilient in keeping their culture and identity.”

“KRG has coordinated with the relevant national and international counterparts to provide guarantees to redress the agonies that Yezidis and other ethnic and religious groups went through,” he told those gathered.

“Furthermore, KRG strives to secure a safe and dignified return for the people who fled their home due to the atrocities of ISIS,” Zebari said, adding that “we request the federal government to exert more efforts in compensating the victims of ISIL (ISIS) crimes.”

The emergence of ISIS led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Yezidis, who the extremist group considers heretics. Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries in the region or Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of ISIS for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Before the 2014 attack, there were roughly 550,000 Yezidis in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. As the terrorist group took over large swaths of territory in Nineveh, 360,000 Ezidis escaped and found refuge elsewhere, according to the Kurdistan Region’s Yezidi Rescue Office.

“The regional government has documented 5,170 ISIS cases of crimes against the Yezidis, from which 2,324 cases have went through the required investigation phases,” Zebari continued. “It is worthy to note that KRG has succeeded in harnessing efforts to rescue 3,500 members of the Yezidi community. From the rescued, 1,206 are women and 339 are men, in addition to 1,049 female and 956 male children.”

He pointed out that Kurdistan Region has always been a safe haven for “our Yezidi brothers and sisters,” adding that “the (KRG) Council of Ministers formed the High Committee to Recognize the Crimes Committed against the Yezidis as genocide to convey the agonies of the Yezidis to the International Criminal Court and requests UNITAD to speed up the process of trying ISIS terrorist for core crimes under international law, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

Yezidi organizations worldwide enthusiastically welcomed a German court ruling in late November that convicted Iraqi ISIS militant Taha al-Jumailly on charges of genocide.

This is the first verdict worldwide to specifically use the label "genocide," an important legal distinction. In the past, ISIS members have been sentenced to jail on the basis of individual crimes against Yezidis, but not genocide.

At Thursday's ceremony, Zebari also emphasized “the need to overcome political and administrative obstacles that prevent justice for the victims' families, and accelerate the formation of the administration in Sinjar, enhancing security and stability and providing material aid and basic services for their return from displacement camps to their indigenous homeland.”

These were precisely the goals when the federal government in Baghdad and the KRG signed the Sinjar Agreement in Oct. 2020.

Over a year later, the agreement remains unimplemented, most seriously regarding its security provisions since multiple armed militias continue to operate there, making further meaningful progress almost impossible.

“The Yezidis are indigenous people of Kurdistan,” Zebari said as he neared the end of his speech, “and we must seize every opportunity to redress their sufferings.”

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... ementation

[Anthea]

Identified remains of 41 Yazidis laid to rest in Kocho

The remains of 41 Yazidis massacred in 2014 by Islamic State (ISIS) in the group’s brutal genocide against the ethno-religious community were returned to their village of Kocho on Thursday, having been identified in a year-long process overseen by the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh (UNITAD) in Baghdad

Coffins of the identified 26 men and 15 women, killed by ISIS in August 2014 along with thousands of Yazidis as the group raged destruction through the region, were borne by Iraqi soldiers and laid to rest in a burial ceremony in the village of Kocho in the Shingal region of Iraq.

ISIS extremists swept across Shingal in the summer of 2014, attacking the Yazidi heartland in Nineveh province and massacaring 1,200 people within days of the attack, capturing over 6,000 predominantly women and children who were subsequently sold into slavery and in numerous and horrific cases killed.

According to academics and activists, about 3,000 women and children remain unaccounted for

This is the second group of remains to be identified and returned to surviving families, enabling relatives and loved ones to hold a ceremony according to the community's religious and cultural practices. In February, 104 Yazidi victims were buried in Kocho village.

Kiche Ammo Slo, a survivor of the massacre in Kocho, told Rudaw on Thursday that he and other villagers were locked in the village school for 15 days by ISIS.

“They gathered us and separated men from women at around 11 or 12pm,” he said, adding that the men were taken to different places.

“We were between 30 and 40 people. They said that we had to convert to Daesh’s ideology or be killed. We rejected this, so they put us in vehicles and killed us,” he said, although he managed to escape death.

Along with the families of those who did not survive, Thursday’s ceremony was attended by Iraqi officials, UN agencies and diplomats. Christian Ritscher, head of UNITAD, assured survivors that they have the international community’s support and that his UN team would continue to investigate ISIS crimes and hold all those who committed crimes against humanity and genocide to account.

“I assure you that you are not forgotten. I believe we have the opportunity to turn the tide from impunity to justice and I am confident that we are one step closer to justice”, he said at the ceremony in Kocho.

Naif Jasim, mukhtar (chieftain) of Kocho village, said at the ceremony that they will continue to identify all of the remaining victims of the massacre.

“So far, the identities of 360 corpses in 25 mass graves have been excavated. 145 dead bodies from Kocho village have been identified: 104 of them were identified and buried earlier this year and today the other 41 will be buried,” he said.

The Yazidi organisation Yazda said in a statement on Wednesday that five days of mourning will follow Thursday's burial, adding that 17 mass graves have so far been exhumed in Kocho; thousands of bodies awaiting exhumation and DNA identification.

Nadia Murad, human rights activist and Yazidi survivor from the Kocho community, tweeted on Thursday that her heart was with all families who “will finally be able to honor their loved ones.”

“Yet, thousands of families still wait to bury relatives, which is why we must push for expedited exhumations,” the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate added.

Today, my community buried 41 Yazidi victims (26 men & 15 women) of the Kocho massacre. My heart is with all families who will finally be able to honor their loved ones. Yet, thousands of families still wait to bury relatives, which is why we must push for expedited exhumations. pic.twitter.com/u8nj4QQD9z
— Nadia Murad (@NadiaMuradBasee) December 9, 2021

Hussein Qassim, Yazidis representative at Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Rudaw that the process of excavation is not easy, as it “takes much time and it also needs a high budget.”

Last week, a court in Frankfurt sentenced a former ISIS member to life imprisonment on charges of crimes against the Yazidis. The man’s wife was sentenced to ten years in prison earlier in October, for aiding and abetting war crimes that included enslaving a Yazidi woman and child who died of thirst after being chained-up in the heat of Fallujah in Anbar province.

Kurdish leaders welcomed the court’s sentencing of the ISIS member to life imprisonment, and leaders also paid respect to the victims of genocide on Thursday.

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani commented in a tweet, that “On the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, we honor victims of genocide across the world. We reaffirm our commitment to defend coexistence & tolerance, support justice for victims, and join efforts to prevent a new genocide.”

Delivered by Dindar Zebari, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani provided a statement of his remarks to the burial ceremony in Kocho, paying his respects to the “victims of one of the most appalling acts in history” and praising the resilience of the Yazidi community “in keeping their culture and identity.”

“The regional government (KRG) has documented 5,170 cases of ISIS’ crimes against the Yazidis, from which 2,324 cases have gone through the required investigation phases,” Zebari, the KRG Coordinator for International Advocacy, said on the prime minister's behalf. “It is worth noting that the KRG has succeeded in harnessing efforts to rescue 3, 500 members of the Yazidi community.”

“The Council of Ministers of the Kurdistan Region formed the High Committee to Recognise the Crimes Committed against the Yazidis as Genocide. The committee has endeavoured to convey the agonies of the Yazidis to the International Criminal Court and hence to obtain international recognition for these dreadful crimes that were committed against the Yazidis. In this respect, it requests UNITAD to speed up the process of trying ISIS terrorist for core crimes under international law, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide,” the statement continued.

“As far as KRG is concerned, a draft law has been prepared that manifests the three core crimes,” the prime minister’s statement read. “This is an important law to prosecute ISIS. Any efforts to obstruct its enactment will be a setback in rendering the terrorists accountable for their heinous crimes in a timely manner.

“UNAMI should put more extensive efforts into restoring peace and stability in Shingal, and this will overwhelmingly be achieved by supporting the execution of this agreement… What happened in Sinjar is a catastrophe that shook the depths of our conscience and expressed the criminalized approach of this organization and its bloody ideology. Efforts must be intensified at home and abroad in order to define it as a crime of genocide and to find and return the abductees,” the prime minister concluded.

On 1 March 2021, the Iraqi parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors Law which is intended to provide a reparations framework for survivors of ISIS crimes, including women and girls who were subjected to sexual violence, as well as child survivors who were abducted before the age of 18.

Despite this, Amnesty International criticised the Iraqi government in November for a lack of meaningful support for the Yazidi community, saying it had “largely ignored the significant recommendations made by Iraqi civil society organizations on the regulations, meaning they lack a survivor-centred approach and fail to establish accountability mechanisms and processes for outreach, applications and review of claims.”

In a separate report released last year, Amnesty International documented how almost 2,000 Yazidi children who have returned to their families after being held captive by ISIS are facing a physical and mental health crisis.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/091220214

[Anthea]

KOCHO

The horror the world allowed to happen

Friday 15 August 2014 the slaughter of Kocho took place

The world already knew of ISIS slaughter and did NOTHING to save the people of Kocho

Sunday 3 August 2014 ISIS main attack on Yazidis

Wednesday 6 August 2014:

We posted an open letter appealing for support and protection for the Yazidis

Thursday 7 August 2014, I found and reposted 2 Telegraph Articles:

ISIS's slaughter of the Yazidi is a new Rwanda happening before our eyes

The Yazidi wish to inform you that tomorrow they will be killed with their families. Actually, it may not be tomorrow. The 40,000 members of Iraq’s most ancient sect, who are currently huddling on the side of Mount Sinjar, might have a bit longer

If they stay there it will apparently take a few days, maybe a few weeks, before they die of thirst, malnutrition and sickness. If they don’t, their deaths at the hands of the butchers of Isis who have surrounded them will be quicker. Though not that quick.

Five hundred of their number have died in the last week alone, 40 of them children. Unfortunately the Yazidi don’t appear to have had access to iPhones, so you won’t have seen the harrowing images of their dead.

Think of the Hotel Rwanda. Or the Dutch UN compound in Srebrenica. That’s Mount Sinjar this morning.

The Iraqi army, who have the responsibility for protecting the Yazidi, are nowhere to be seen. Kurdish Peshmurga troops, regarded as a more potent fighting force, have also been forced to withdraw.

And where are we? "Everybody is retreating to their corners,” Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad, told the Guardian. “And there is no credible international actor that I can see that is trying to bring it together again. It definitely is an existential threat to the Iraqi government and I think it represents yet another manifestation of the disintegration of Iraq as we know it.”

It’s certainly an existential threat to the Yazidi. And another manifestation of the disintegration of our tattered moral authority.

“What can we do?” is the cry so often heard as we cast our eyes across these distant battlefields. And as I wrote yesterday, the answer is nothing. Because we choose to do nothing.

.......................................................................................
The people of Kocho were still alive and could have been saved but the world did NOTHING

[Anthea]

Turkish warplanes target Shingal

Suspected Turkish warplanes launched an airstrike for the second time within five days in the Yazidi heartland of Shingal (Sinjar) district on Saturday with no casualties reported, Yazidi activists and groups said

Turkey bombed the town of Khanasor on the Syrian border targeting a building that was used by the Autonomous Administration Council of Shingal, established by Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), for meetings, Murad Ismael, co-founder of Sinjar Academy and a Yazidi activist said in a tweet.

“This building is one few good building in the town and was used before ISIS for social and political activities, weddings,” he said referring to the Islamic State by its acronym. “In addition to the horror this strike caused, and assuming no casualties, this building worthed [sic] 200,000 dollars and it’s gone now,” he added.

The YBS was established to protect the Yezidi community in Iraq in 2007, playing a crucial role in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) after it overran the district in August 2014 and committed genocide against the the ethno-religious minority.

The district has been hit by multiple Turkish airstrikes in recent years, which appeared to have given more reasons to the displaced Yezidis not to return from camps in the Kurdistan region to their ancestral homeland. Ankara justifies its strikes by claiming Mount Shingal is host to a number of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions and considers YBS to be linked to them.

The Free Yezidi Foundation called out the international community to stop Turkey. “How many Yezidis must die before Turkey is stopped?” The NGO said in a tweet. They added that ISIS “came to eradicate the #Yazidi on land; now Turkish places + drones attack from above.”

Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis fled their homes in the summer of 2014, seeking shelter on Mount Shingal, and then in the Kurdistan Region with a limited number resettled in Europe and North America. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and over 6,000 people were abducted, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Over 2,000 remain missing.

The region has stayed unstable due to the presence of a number of armed militias, constant Turkish airstrikes and the dispute between Baghdad and Erbil over who runs the district.

Five days ago, a commander of YBS, Marwan Badal Haji was killed in a Turkish airstrike in the same town a stronghold of YBS. He was traveling in a vehicle accompanied by two of his children who survived the attack. Marwan was known as Haval Dezhwar amongst the locals and hailed from the same area.

Earlier in August, a Turkish airstrike killed two members of the YBS, including a senior commander and three civilians. Another airstrike hit a hospital in Shingal a day later, killing four care workers and four YBS fighters.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/11122021

[Anthea]

Skirmishes with Iraqi forces

One member of the Iraqi army and four others were reportedly injured on Sunday when skirmishes broke out between Iraqi security forces and protestors who were rallying against the recent Turkish airstrikes that targeted the Yazidi heartland of Shingal

One member of the Iraqi army was injured “while securing protection for protesters condemning the Turkish attack on Iraqi lands,” Iraq’s Security Media Cell said in a statement.

An investigation has been launched into “the shooting incident,” the statement added.

Major General Mohammed Malallah also confirmed the injury of the Iraqi soldier to Rudaw.

Turkish warplanes launched two airstrikes on the town of Khanasor in five days. One commander of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), which was established to protect the Yezidi community in Iraq in 2007, was killed in one of the airstrikes.

Qasim Shasho, head of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Shingal, told Rudaw that a fight broke out between the YBS and the Iraqi army, adding that three YBS fighters and a member of the Iraqi army were injured.

However, the mayor of Sinune town in Shingal Khudeda Chuke said a female journalist called Nasrin Hussein was also injured. Malallah said Hussein sustained a minor injury and "was hit with a stone" while covering the protests.

The district has been hit by multiple Turkish airstrikes in recent years. Ankara justifies its strikes by claiming Mount Shingal is host to a number of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions and considers YBS to be linked to them. It designates the PKK as a terrorist organization. The YBS played a crucial role in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) after it overran the district in August 2014 and committed genocide against the ethnoreligious minority.

The frequent airstrikes appear to have given more reasons to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Yezidis that fled ISIS seven years ago not to return from camps in the Kurdistan Region to their ancestral homeland. Yazidis displaced from Shingal earlier this year said they were also forced to flee IDP camps in Duhok province due to nearby Turkish bombardments.

The region has been further destabilized due to the presence of a number of armed militias and the dispute between Baghdad and Erbil over who runs the district.

Yazidi activist and co-founder of Sinjar Academy, Murad Ismael, said in a tweet on Sunday what is happening in Sinjar is "very worrying and will negatively affect the general situation, people’s lives, and the recovery from the genocide."

"Everyone bears the responsibility, and there will be a real catastrophe if reason, balance and law are not invoked," he added.

In the first days of the genocide, about 1,300 people were killed and over 6,000 people were abducted, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Around 3,000 remain missing.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/12122021

[Anthea]

PKK shuts government offices in Sinjar

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has shut down all governmental offices in the disputed Sinjar (Shingal) district, except for the police directorate, a source close to the PKK in Shingal told Kurdistan 24 Sunday morning

The source explained that the PKK had sent fighters to various Shingal offices to implement the decision.

"This morning, the PKK forces delivered a message to us asking to evacuate Shingal's municipality office and close its doors," Shingal municipal mayor Jamil Sivok told Kurdistan 24. "PKK has put a force in front of the municipality building to ensure their decision is implemented.

Sivok said he had later informed the first deputy governor of Ninevah province, Sirwan Rozhbayani, who had said to him that Iraqi security forces would deploy to the area to resolve the situation.

Sources later told Kurdistan 24 that Iraqi forces had been seen across Shingal province to prevent the PKK measures.

Last August, the United States urged the PKK and the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to "fully withdraw" from Shingal to allow the long-awaited implementation of the eponymous agreement.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has long criticized the PKK's presence in the region.

"The presence of PKK, especially with the ongoing conflict with Turkey, has been the reason that dragged Turkey into this area," Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said in a multi-panel event organized by the Middle East Research Institute (MERI) in October.

"So, the PKK could have done all of us a favor to have left and not given any reason for the ongoing conflicts."

The PKK formed several political entities in Shingal to run in Iraq's October elections in an attempt to politically control Shingal. These included the Yazidi Freedom and Democracy Party, the Yazidi Progress Party, the Yazidi Democratic Party, and the Yazidi Movement for Reform.

The PKK performed poorly in the elections. None of its three candidates got enough votes to win a single seat in the Iraqi parliament. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) candidates, on the other hand, won all three seats for Shingal in parliament.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... ted-Sinjar

[Anthea]

Yezidi organizations condemn PKK

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An umbrella organization of activists and groups that works to support the Yezidi (Ezidi) religious minority in northern Syria on Sunday condemned the recent forced closure of public and private offices in the disputed Iraqi district of Sinjar (Shingal) by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)

"We categorically reject these unacceptable negative measures and behaviors that do not serve the region, which were issued by an illegal political party that does not have the authority in such situations," read a statement issued by Yezidi House.

The press release came just hours after an Iraqi soldier was injured when clashes broke out, according to a military press office, "as the Iraqi army was securing the protection of demonstrators condemning the Turkish aggression on Iraqi territory."

Prior to that, the PKK-backed Self-Administration and Democracy Council in Sinjar, issued the decision to close the offices indefinitely in protest of the Turkish actions.

The PKK, headquartered in the mountains of the autonomous Kurdistan Region, has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against Ankara over Kurdish rights in Turkey.

"We in the Yezidi House" continued the statement, "represents the mass and popular base of the Yezidi community. We stand with the law and with the state's general system in order to maintain security, stability, and peace."

The statement bore the signature of Qolo Afdo Suleiman, the group's leader, who concluded the message with, "Long live Iraq as a land and people. Long live the heroic Iraqi security forces. Long live the true, holy Yezidi nationalism."

On Thursday, a Kurdistan Region official stressed “the need to overcome political and administrative obstacles that prevent justice for the victims' families, and accelerate the formation of the administration in Sinjar, enhancing security and stability and providing material aid and basic services for their return from displacement camps to their indigenous homeland.”

These were precisely the goals when the federal government in Baghdad and the KRG signed the Sinjar Agreement in Oct. 2020.

Over a year later, the agreement remains unimplemented, most seriously regarding its security provisions since multiple armed militias continue to operate there, making further meaningful progress almost impossible.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... -in-Sinjar

[Anthea]

ISIS victims to be buried in Kojo
Wladimir van Wilgenburg

Forty-one Yezidi civilians who ISIS massacred in August 2014 will be buried in the village of Kojo in the presence of Iraqi officials and diplomats on Thursday

The unearthing is the latest in the process of recovering the remains of people killed in ISIS's massacre of the Yezidi (Ezidi) minority after the terrorist group overran Sinjar in 2014.

Thursday's burial follows the previous burial of 100 Yezidi ISIS victims in Kojo in February.

Yezidi survivor and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad is from Kojo. Yezidi men in Kojo were executed after ISIS took over the village. Kojo's women and girls were kidnapped and enslaved.

The United Nations estimates that ISIS killed around 5,000 Yezidi men and forced 7,000 women and girls in Sinjar into sexual slavery. A UN team investigating ISIS atrocities found "clear and compelling evidence" that the group committed genocide against the Yezidis.

In a press statement, the multinational organization pro-Yezidi rights organization Yazda said that five days of mourning will be observed after the burial.

"The UN-supported exhumation process in Kocho (Kojo) started in March 2019 and continued during 2020," the statement read. "So far, 17 mass graves have been exhumed in Kocho and 104 Yazidi victims were buried earlier this year."

The identification of the remains was carried out by the Iraqi Medico-Legal Department (MLD) of the Martyrs Foundation, with assistance from the UN Investigative Team for Accountability of ISIS (UNITAD) and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

The MLD also called on family members of the missing to provide authorities with a blood sample to accelerate the DNA-matching process during a meeting with Yezidi's in Duhok on Nov. 24.

"Members of the Yazidi community who will be travelling back to Iraq from abroad are specifically asked to get in touch with MLD or Yazda in the coming days and weeks," Yazda said.

Although Iraq and UNITAD are doing their best to identify victims "hundreds of bodies remain unidentified due to a lack of human resources, and financial support," Yazda's Country Director in Iraq, Jameel Chomer, said in a press conference.

"We call on the international community to support both teams and to accelerate the processes of identification and exhumation in Sinjar," Chomer said.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... ed-in-Kojo

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[img]https://cdn.kurdistan24.net/images/Dec-2021/1639668201lalish33.jpg[/

Yezidis annual Festival of Fasting

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Statesman and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Masoud Barzani congratulated members of the Yezidi (Ezidi) community in the Kurdistan Region and abroad on the occasion of the religious group's Festival of Fasting (Cejna rojîyê), also known as the Fast of Yezidi

"On the occasion of the Festival of Fasting, I extend my warmest congratulations and blessings to the Yezidi brothers and sisters in Kurdistan and around the world," Barzani said in a statement.

The occasion is one of the Yezidi faith's holiest days and marks the third and final of three fasting days performed over a period of three weeks each winter.

Barzani expressed his hope that the holiday would bring "happiness, peace, and security to the Yezidi brothers and sisters and end their suffering."

The 2014 emergence of ISIS led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Yezidis, who the extremist group considers heretics. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries in the region or Western states.

"Kurdistan is the land of peace and of many religions," the leader concluded, pledging to "continue to preserve the culture of brotherhood and profound coexistence between various groups and religions."

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... of-Fasting

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Sinjar Agreement must be implemented

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – While honoring a high holiday for the Yezidi (Ezidi) religious minority on Thursday, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani used the occasion to advocate for a plan signed over a year ago aimed at bringing stability and security to Iraq's disputed Yezidi-majority district of Sinjar (Shingal)

In a statement, the leader expressed "his warmest congratulations and blessings to the Yezidi brothers and sisters on the occasion of the Festival of Fasting," and that he hoped the holiday would prove to be "filled with joys and delights."

The occasion is one of the Yezidi faith's holiest days and marks the third and final of three fasting days performed over a period of three weeks each winter.

Barzani vowed that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) "will continue its path in order to serve all its peoples and to consolidate the culture of religious and national coexistence in the region."

Turning to a topic central to the decimated Yezidi population remaining within Iraq's borders, he said that his government "insists" on carrying out the process of "normalizing the situation in Sinjar and its suburbs through the implementation of the Sinjar Agreement and the withdrawal of outlaw groups so that displaced Yezidi brothers and sisters can return to their homes with their heads held high."

One of the plan's major provisions of the Sinjar Agreement, reached between the federal government of Baghdad and the autonomous KRG in October 2020, calls for the removal of all of several armed groups and militias that operate in the embattled district.

The 2014 emergence of ISIS led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Yezidis from Sinjar. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries in the region or Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of ISIS for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Before the attack, roughly 550,000 Yezidis lived in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. As the terrorist group took over large swaths of territory in Nineveh province, where Sinjar is located.

The agreement's primary purpose involves understandings on security, civil administration, reconstruction, and service rehabilitation as necessary steps toward the return home of the thousands of displaced families.

Over a year after its signing, the agreement remains unimplemented, most seriously regarding its security provisions since multiple armed militias continue to operate there, making further meaningful progress almost impossible.

Last week at a solemn ceremony held in Sinjar to bury the recovered remains of Yezidi civilians murdered by ISIS, a KRG representative stressed “the need to overcome political and administrative obstacles that prevent justice for the victims' families, and accelerate the formation of the administration in Sinjar, enhancing security and stability and providing material aid and basic services for their return from displacement camps to their indigenous homeland.”

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/26 ... ementation

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'Strangers in their own land':

Yazidis and their plight, 7 years on from genocide

Each year in the second week of December, Iraqi Yazidis, an ethnoreligious minority in northern Iraq, celebrate Rojiet Ezi, a festival that follows three days of fasting. During my ethnographic fieldwork in a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2019, I witnessed how this festival brings joy to the displaced Yazidis as they celebrate with family and friends and assemble in festive clothes. At the same time, however, the fasting festival was filled with sorrow and grief.

More than 200,000 displaced Iraqi Yazidis are living in refugee camps, where poverty is deepening. Many families are still searching for nearly 3,000 Yezidi women and children who were kidnapped by the Islamic State group in 2014. The Yazidi homeland in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq remains a war-torn area, as the prospect of economic and political stability in Iraq remains unclear.

Who are Yazidis, and why, even after seven years, have they not been able to return their lives to normalcy?

Yazidi beliefs

Yazidis, colloquially called “the people of the Peacock Angel,” are the followers of a monotheistic religion. Although the religion of Yazidis contains elements similar to those of other faiths, such Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, it maintains strikingly different interpretations and practices.

Yazidis believe that God, whom they refer to as Xwedê, handed over the worldly affairs to seven holy beings, known as Heft Sir. The Peacock Angel, or Melek Tawus, is the preeminent figure among these holy beings and is believed to be the main representative of God on the face of the Earth.

For centuries, European and Islamic scholars erroneously conflated the figure of Peacock Angel with the devil in Abrahamic religions. This misconception has caused Yazidis to be mistakenly labeled as devil-worshippers.

The history of the Yazidi community in northern Iraq is laden with oppression and violence. For almost six centuries, Yazidis were subjected to persecutions during the Ottoman Empire that ruled between 1299 to 1922. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the British Army targeted Yazidis and other ethnic groups in northern Iraq in the early 20th century.

The violent campaigns against Yazidis continued during the Baath regime that was in power from 1968 to 2003. The destruction of Yazidi villages at the time resulted in Yazidis’ mass displacement. In 2007, A few years after the American invasion of Iraq, the Yazidi community endured one of the deadliest car bomb attacks in post-Saddam Iraq.

The Yazidi lore attests to 74 persecutions throughout history.

A region left defenseless

The 2014 Islamic State group attack, known as “The Black Day” or Roja Reş, which led to the fall of Sinjar and the mass exodus of the Yazidi community, was not an isolated event. Rather, it had its roots in the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and the power struggle that ensued.

Following the American invasion, the Sinjar region fell under the category of “disputed territories.” These territories, which mostly consist of oil-rich areas, have long been at the heart of the Arab-Kurdish conflict in Iraq. Before the American invasion, these areas were mostly under the control of the Iraqi Army. However, after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Kurdistan Regional Government came to control parts of these areas, including the Sinjar region, with the support of the U.S. military. The sectarian environment and the political vacuum following the fall of Saddam contributed to the rise of the Islamic State group in the region.

On the eve of the terrorist attack in 2014, thousands of Yazidis put their hope in the promises of Kurdish authorities for protection. However, the hasty withdrawal of Kurdish forces left the entire region defenseless.

Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis escaped to the Sinjar Mountain in the scorching summer heat as the Islamic State group took over the region. The majority of the Yazidis were ultimately resettled in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, where I conducted my fieldwork.



Pandemic and despair

Seven years after the Islamic State group attack, Iraqi Yazidis still suffer from the same structural challenges rooted in the sectarian divide and grapple with the ramifications of the 2014 genocide.

I witnessed how displaced Yazidis struggled to gain access to basic services such as electricity and clean water. The high cost of health care often prevents them from receiving treatment, or even if they do, it leads to immense financial hardships.

An agreement signed by the Kurdistan and Iraqi governments in 2020 to restore stability in the Sinjar region has not been implemented yet. This agreement provides a framework for the deportation and disarmament of all armed groups in the region and assisting displaced Yazidis to return to their homeland.

The pandemic has further pushed displaced Yazidis into despair and worsened their living conditions in the refugee camps. Many have had to choose either to remain in the camps, enduring extended lockdowns and losing their livelihoods, or to embrace the risks of the political and military violence involved in returning to their homes.

During the fasting festival in 2019 when I was conducting my fieldwork, I saw Yazidi children, dressed in new clothes and smiles, cheerily visiting each tent to collect candy. At the same time, however, their parents wrestled with the pain and anguish of occupying a space where they are viewed as outsiders. As a displaced Yazidi told me during my fieldwork: “It feels as if you are a stranger in your own land.”

https://theconversation.com/strangers-i ... ide-170699

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ISIS survivor victim of cancel culture

Alongside colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building, “cancel culture” is the latest of toxic Western ideas to be foisted upon the Middle East. This past week, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad was the latest victim of the West’s cancel culture, as she was disinvited from a book event by Canada’s Toronto District School Board. This may sound trivial, but it’s a big deal

Murad is a member of Iraq’s Yazidi ethno-religious minority. She was kidnapped at age 19 by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. ISIS, at the ascendancy of its power, pillaged, executed, and sexually exploited locals with reckless abandon. In just her village, some 600 innocents – including her mother and six of her brothers – were summarily executed. Murad was taken to be one of 7,000 Yazidi women and girls enslaved.

Her first attempt at freedom resulted in gang rape by the savage jihadists. Her powerful story of successful escape and survival lent a voice to the world’s voiceless victims of human trafficking and exploitation – and led her to become the first UN goodwill ambassador on the issue. Murad was also awarded the Sakharov Prize and the Clinton Global Citizen Award, among other prestigious distinctions.

The rise of cancel culture sweeping Western politics accelerates to the fore, a leading issue at the center of an increasing sociopolitical divide about the freedom and limits of self-expression. To break down the term for those in Israel and abroad: if you are (or ever were) afoul of an ever-shifting cultural sensitivity toward acceptable expression or behavior, you will be canceled from the public sphere.

Cancel culture is affecting pop culture icons and historical legends, dead or alive

A statue of American founding father president Thomas Jefferson was recently toppled, after 187 years in New York’s City Hall, for his past ownership of slaves. And in the most infamous case, former president Donald Trump was banished from social media for perceived incitement and general animus.

MURAD, HOWEVER, simply wanted to tell her story to students in Toronto who wanted to hear a discussion on her book, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. Toronto officials egregiously claimed that the book event would “offend” students of the Muslim faith and potentially “promote Islamophobia.”

Unless sexual enslavement of minorities is a tenet of Islam (it isn’t), then it is not clear what the problem is. Would an event by a victim-author about priest abuse be offensive to Catholics – let alone canceled – by these officials? Can we discuss the Imperial Japanese Army’s use of “comfort women” in World War II, or is it too offensive to the Japanese among us?

Curiously, one also never hears of anti-Israel campus events being canceled out of an abundance of precaution for possible antisemitic implications. It comes as no surprise that Toronto is also the scene of a campus debate on banning kosher foods that “normalize Israeli apartheid.”

So, are Muslims the actual aggrieved people here? It could simply be caterwauling from a group of self-appointed “woke” white protectors, desperate to convolute evermore extreme constructions of someone else’s victimhood for their social gain.

Or maybe this event is a trigger to Canadian school administrators who have long sought to brush their dark legacy of cultural genocide under the rug. Countless indigenous children were seized from their parents by the Canadian regime in a system that existed in various forms from the 1600s until the 1990s.

Often abused, some youth also faced medical experimentation. When things went wrong, the children were disposed of in unmarked, mass grave sites on a scale still unknown to this day.

This absurd theater is an affront to any of the many devout and secular Muslims that I know. It’s also an insult to the discerning intellect of this and the future generations of curious students.

Personally meeting Murad and her husband before a 2016 speech at the UN in New York City, I saw a person who is so much more than a victim. She gave a compelling testimony that held up a mirror to mankind, and showed our human race that the post-Holocaust mantra of “never again” was but a hollow ideal.

In multiple visits to the region, I observed the devastating destruction of Sinjar and numerous Yazidi and Christian villages, holy sites and homes. Almost nothing compares to the soul-killing impact of ISIS upon children and women who are to this day living in “temporary” ratty tents since 2014’s summer of horror.

This is hard for most readers to imagine. So reader, here’s a homework assignment for you. Do this before you forget. Go to YouTube and search “Nadia Murad returns,” for a clip by TRT World, of her first visit home since the slaughter of her family. Hear her account on Trevor Noah. Did your eyes stay dry?

Now, consider her experience as but one of the Yazidi people at large. The Yazidi never had postwar reparations. They have been abandoned, with little reconstruction, limited prosecution of their persecutors, and left alone to contend with mental scars. To add insult to injustice, Murad – the Yazidis’ one promising hope for global advocacy – is now being silenced and shunned in the West.

Meanwhile, there are sickening reports of former ISIS child sex slaves encountering their former captors on the streets of Germany, among other places that toe a compassionate line to the jihadists. A saying from the Midrash goes roughly, “All who are merciful to the cruel in the end become cruel to those who deserve mercy.”

The West, once a striving lodestar of morality – now fraught and wrangling with an internal identity and cultural crisis – needs to introspect on how it treats victims of terror and heinous sexual violence. If shutting down a Nobel laureate like Murad is not crossing a line for how far “cancel culture” can go, then what is?

The writer is a Kurdish affairs analyst and graduate student at The University of Chicago. He has reported from the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey since 2015.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/canceling ... ion-689109