Genocide

The first genocide of the 21st century was committed against the ethno-religious group of Yazidis in Sinjar (northern Iraq) in August 2014. The United Nations, numerous human rights organisations and states, e.g. USA, Canada, England, Israel, Armenia, classified the persecution and destruction as genocide. The European Parliament reiterated this position with a resolution passed in February 2016. After a successful online petition, the recognition of the genocide in Germany was discussed in the Petitions and Human Rights Committee and recognized as genocide on 19 January 2023 by the German Bundestag. For various reasons, this genocide has not been documented or scientifically processed in Iraq or any other country, nor has it been punished through judicial means. Years later, the consequences for the Yazidi victim-survivors are still massive and destructive.

Attack in August 2014

Even before the start of the genocide in 2014, there were repeated repressions and acts of terrorism against Yazidis in the Sinjar province. For example, in August 2007, more than 500 people died in the two Yazidi districts of Til Ezêr and Sîba Şêx Xidir, presumably through Islamist suicide bombers. Until 2014, Sinjar was the world’s largest Yazidi settlement area, with about 400,000 Yazidis living alongside approximately 80,000 Arab Muslims.

In the early morning of August 3, 2014, fighters from the Islamic State (IS, also ISIS or DAIŞ) terrorist militia attacked the Yazidi settlements in the Sinjar province. The Peshmerga, i.e., the military units of the autonomous Kurdistan Region/ Iraq, which were stationed there since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, withdrew from the attackers.

With heavy artillery, IS fighters destroyed villages, towns and temples, which they robbed and burned. Yazidi families were divided. Men and those trying to flee were killed individually or in groups, often in front of their next of kin. The victims were buried in over 80 mass graves. In addition, over 6,400 Yazidis, especially women and children, were abducted, raped and enslaved. Within a few hours, around 400,000 people became internally displaced.

The genocide of the Yazidis took place before the eyes and with the knowledge of the international media landscape: calls for help and video clips of the crimes spread via mobile phones and e-mails. Similarly, ISIS perpetrators posted the atrocities on their social media channels for propaganda purposes.

Escape

The attack on the city and the province of the same name, Sinjar, forced around 400,000 Yazidis to leave their homeland. Those who could not escape to the Kurdistan Region/ Iraq fled to the neighbouring mountains. There, Yazidis, who often had not even had the opportunity to take their personal belongings or sufficient food and water with them, stayed for several days. Finally, on 10 August 2014 YPG/YPJ units, with the support of other military units and indiviuals, were able to set up an escape corridor to areas of the kurdish-managed Rojava-administration (northern Syria).. Around 50,000 Yazidis could be evacuated. This way, they prevented an even larger massacre of Yazidis by the ISIS terrorist militia. Some elderly and infants did not survive. They died of hunger and thirst in the mountains.

At that time, Yazidis, who had escaped to Rojava (northern Syria), could hardly fall back on organised aid structures since the escape via the corridor had to be organised in a hurry due to the massive and imminent threat. Yazidis lived on the streets for days, and many moved on to Iraq in the following days, where they faced a similar situation. Only after some time could provisional refugee camps be set up in the Kurdish-governed areas of Syria and northern Iraq. Many Yazidis continued their escape via Turkey. In the Kurdish-dominated south-eastern regions of Turkey, primarily the municipalities set up refugee camps in which Yazidis also found refuge, the largest of them in the Diyarbakır region.

Many Yazidis who fled via Turkey made their way to Europe – a life-threatening escape given the criminalisation of passage routes, including by the European Union. As a result, many Yazidis drowned in the Mediterranean, trying to flee the atrocities committed by IS. The authorities took most of those who made it to Europe to other refugee camps.

The conditions in the Greek refugee camps were also provisional. The camps were overcrowded. Families were often left to fight for themselves. Germany was the most common escape destination for those Yazidis who made it to Europe. Around 200,000 Yazidis are still living in the refugee camps in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan Region (by 2024).

Enslavement

More than 6,400 Yazidis were abducted by ISIS terrorists. Martyrdom began for them. ISIS fighters repeatedly raped Yazidi women and girls before selling them on slave markets in Syria and Iraq, for example, in Raqqa or Mosul. A survivor recalls her sale at a market in Raqqa:

[I]f any of the men chose us he would raise his hand. The seller from ISIS had [a] paper with our name and the price for us on it. They would give it to the man who raised that hand. Then he would take the woman, or women, to his car and he would go.

— Taken from: United Nations Human Rights Council (2016): ‘They came to destroy’:
ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, p.13.

IS members involved in the buying and selling came from countries all over the world. There were fighters from Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Germany and other Western countries. As the United Nations (2016) explained, IS treats the kidnapped women and girls as so-called spoils of war, which IS fighters claim to ‘possess’. So as soon as a Yazidi woman or girl was sold, she became the ‘possession’ of the buyer. They could be resold, given away or inherited as they pleased.

After they were sold, Yazidi women and girls and small children who were sold with their mothers lived directly with the IS fighters or were housed by them in apartments or houses. Since they were not allowed to leave their quarters, they were usually locked up. Attempts to escape were prevented by denying the captive women and girls the abaya; a traditional Islamic garment women had to wear in public in IS-controlled areas. Survivors report an absolute lack of rights, sexual and domestic slavery, forced marriages, forced conversion to Islam and severe indoctrination. As Tagay and Ortaç (2016) summarise, the exercise of sexual violence is legitimised by IS through a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic legal principles.

Around 2,600 women and children kidnapped and enslaved by ISIS are currently in the hands of their tormentors or in places where they were sold if they are still alive. In addition, there are isolated cases in which the ransom of a Yazidi woman or a Yazidi child from captivity for horrendous sums of money is successful or missing Yazidis are found in refugee camps.


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