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Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:34 pm

Death of Yazidi prince leaves a community rudderless

Prince Tahseen Said Ali led the Yazidi community for over 75 years

The death of leading Yazidi figure Prince Tahseen Said Ali has left a void in the beleaguered community that no one can fill, members of the religious minority have said following his funeral in the holy town of Lalish in Iraq last week.

After Prince Tahseen died aged 85 in Germany last Monday following a lengthy illness, thousands of mourners descended on the mountain valley in northern Iraq that is home to the religion's most holy site to pay their respects to the man who led their community for over 75 years.

Men dressed in white accompanied the funeral cortege playing flutes and drums as burning incense filled the air. Afterwards mourners approached the grave one by one to lay a flower or kiss a portrait depicting the prince.

His death has left the community leaderless while it is still reeling from the sufferings inflicted on it by ISIS, Faris Keti told The National.

Mr Keti served as an adviser to Prince Tahseen and the Highest Yazidi Spiritual Council and said the prince left behind an indelible legacy, including ensuring the religion was enshrined in Iraq's 2005 constitution. “He gained respect by influencing and forcing the Iraqi government to build schools and support the education process in Yazidi areas," Mr Keti said.

A religious community of perhaps 850,000 adherents, many of whom historically lived around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq, the Yazidi faith combines elements of various ancient Middle Eastern religions. Its followers pray facing the sun and worship seven angels – first among them Melek Taus, or Peacock Angel. They do not have a holy book.

Extremist group ISIS viewed the religion as heretical and when it overran large parts of Iraq in 2014 singled out Yazidis as apostates. Thousands of Yazidis were killed in what the UN commission described as a genocide against the group. According to authorities, more than 6,400 Yazidis were abducted by ISIS, only half of whom have subsequently escaped and returned home. The fate of the others remains unknown.

Prince Tahseen was born in 1933 in Iraq’s northwest Sheikhan district and was appointed head of the Yazidi community at age 11 after the death of his father.

Prince Tahseen, who lived for many years in Germany, home to a large Yazidi expatriate community, campaigned tirelessly for the persecution of his people by ISIS to be declared a genocide.

The community was centred in territories sandwiched between Arab and Kurdish areas, leading to frequent tensions. “The prince played a vital role in balancing the situation between the two sides of conflict,” Mr Keti said.

A significant step taken by Prince Tahseen was to declare that Yazidi women who were abducted and raped by ISIS fighters would not be excommunicated and any children born would be recognised as Yazidi.

“His response was magnificent, showing as it did the grandeur of his thinking and the practical nature of his life,” said Baroness Emma Nicholson, who chairs the AMAR International Charitable Association which has provided health and education support to the Yazidis.

“The great generosity of spirit was a golden thread throughout his lifetime of service to his beloved people,” Baroness Nicholson said.

He is survived by his son, Prince Hasim and grandson Prince Diar.

https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/d ... s-1.824107
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Feb 14, 2019 11:10 pm

Nobel Winner Murad Sheds Light on Yazidi Genocide
By CAROLINE KAPP

Click on image to enlarge:
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Nadia Murad with fiancé Abid Shamdeen

When Nadia Murad was taken captive as a sex slave by ISIS in August 2014, she was 19 years old — the same age as many of the students who packed Wilson Hall to hear her speak on Tuesday night

Today, at age 26, Murad is using the atrocities she and her community faced to fuel a life of activism. Her talk, “Pursuing Peace and Justice: A Conversation with Nadia Murad,” explored her story as an activist and captive of ISIS and her recognition as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which she was awarded last fall. Murad became both the first Iraqi and Yazidi to receive the prize.

The talk Murad gave on Tuesday was originally scheduled for Oct. 5, but Murad had to cancel her visit last minute because she was awarded the Nobel Prize on that day. Murad and her co-winner Denis Mukwege received the prize “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”

Murad’s apology for the cancelation at the beginning of her talk on Tuesday was met with laughs from the audience.

The talk was introduced by Vice President for Academic Development and Professor of American Studies Tim Spears and facilitated by Associate Professor of History Febe Armanios. Murad was joined on stage by her fiancé and translator Abid Shamdeen.

Murad opened her talk by describing her background as a member of the Yazidi, a little-known ethno-religious minority group. The Yazidi only number around 500,000 to 700,000, and most of them live in Iraq. The region of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq is the Yazidis’ home, and Murad’s home village of Kocho is located in this region.

Kocho was home to around 1,700 people, and most families were dependent on farming and cattle. The youngest of 11 children, Murad was the only one of her siblings to attend school, as they could only afford for one child to go. “Our life was simple,” she said.

But by June of 2014, ISIS had begun to attack many villages around Sinjar. Members of other religious minorities, such as Christians, were given the option to stay in their homes and pay a fee or flee the territory. When ISIS entered Sinjar on Aug. 3, the Yazidi were not given such options.

“They had a specific plan of eradicating Yazidis from that region,” Murad said. “A specific plan of executing men mostly and enslaving women and children.”

The United Nations has classified ISIS atrocities against the Yazidis as acts of genocide. Six of Murad’s eight brothers were killed in the attack along with her mother and many nieces and nephews.

While much of the Sinjar region has been liberated from ISIS, political competition, reflecting regional conflicts, along with a lack of resources and reconstruction has made the Yazidi homeland difficult to return to, Murad said. Rather than return home, many Yazidi remain in refugee camps around the Middle East.

“It’s not a stable environment for Yazidis to go back to,” Murad said.

Today, over 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in captivity in ISIS territory in Syria. Many are missing including Murad’s sister-in-law, who disappeared two years ago.

Many Yazidis are displaced, including about 350,000 who are living in camps in Northern Iraq along with more living in refugee camps in Greece and Turkey. About 65,000 Yazidi have returned home, Murad said, but those who did face daunting challenges, including poor health and lack of electricity.

While Yazidis have received some support from governments in Canada, Australia, France and Germany, Murad has called on regional governments, such as Turkey, for help.

Last year, Murad returned to Iraq and met with many local leaders. They discussed why the Yazidi people remained unprotected by the government even after the genocide and talked about ways in which the government could help support the Yazidis so they can start rebuilding Sinjar. Murad also helped obtain approval from the Iraqi government to build a genocide museum in Sinjar.

During her visit, Murad returned to Kocho, where she attended a religious celebration meant to honor the dead. This was the first time they celebrated the holiday since the genocide.

“I wanted to do this as a restart of our culture and traditions and to help people start doing the same thing we used to do,” she said.

In 2016, Murad founded Nadia’s Initiative, a nonprofit organization working to address issues of sexual violence, advocate for victims and aid communities affected by crisis. In the talk, Murad discussed the difficulties of using her personal tragedies to construct a life of activism.

“For me as a woman, as a survivor, someone who has lost family members and been through this trauma it was especially difficult for a woman from the Middle East, from that region, to break taboos and speak about these stories,” she said. “But I had no other choice but to do it.”

Murad explained how she hopes that the Nobel Peace Prize will help further her goals.

“We are hoping to use this recognition to put more light on these communities that are facing persecution and genocide and prevent these acts to take place in the future,” she said, stressing the importance of recognizing the genocide in real terms to ensure against the extinction of the Yazidi community.

Murad recognized the possibility that the Yazidis will leave their ancestral homeland in order to seek better and safer lives somewhere else. But, even when Yazidis have made it to different places in Europe, she said, many still face discrimination. Their homes are raided by police looking to deport them, and many have been denied asylum.

She described what is has been like to live away from her home for the past few years. In addition to drastic cultural and day to day differences, she discussed the sad truth that her perpetrators were able to stay in her homeland while she had to flee.

Murad finished her talk with a message for young people, and Middlebury students in particular.

“You as students here are lucky to have the chance to come here and study and choose your own path,” she said, emphasizing that not all young people have these opportunities.

Murad also highlighted that governments and weapons can’t solve all these problems and that she counts on young people to accomplish her goals.

Following the talk Nora Peachin ’21 reflected on the importance of having Murad speak at Middlebury.

“The takeaway for me is there really is no excuse not to be doing activism work and speaking out and fighting for justice and peace,” Peachin said.

https://middleburycampus.com/43069/news ... e-in-talk/
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sun Feb 17, 2019 4:36 am

Joy of Yazidi women after liberation from ISIS

As soon as they reach the areas of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the People’s/Women’s Defense Units (YPG/YPJ), the Yazidis breathe freedom as if they have returned to life again; forming a circle of joy and pleasure filled with feelings

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The Middle East is the center of civilization in the world, and Kurdistan is the richest region in this vast geography. And so it has been constantly targeted throughout its history. The last of these brutal attacks was on August 3, 2014, when the ISIS terrorists attacked the Yazidis in Shengal.

Without a distinction between children or adults, men or women, the ISIS militants carried out a massacre against the Yazidis and exterminated them to a deep wound in the heart that would not heal.

In addition to these massacres, thousands of Yazidis women and children were kidnapped and, to this day, many have been liberated in all areas reclaimed from the control of ISIS. For months, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG and YPJ units have been conducting their campaign against the last terrorist-controlled terrain, as part of the Jazeera Strom campaign and its final stage, the Battle to Defeat Terrorism.

The operation continues with the liberation of hundreds of civilians from the terrorist organization on a daily basis.

As we move through the corridor where civilians fled from ISIS towards the SDF territory, we have seen touching moments that are impossible to forget.

Among the civilians who were liberated recently in the last ISIS pockets, are Yazidi women and children abducted from Shengal in 2014. These women and children, upon their arrival to the areas where the Syrian Democratic Forces and the People's and Women's Defense Units are present, were happy to be rescued from terror, to return to life.

The happiness on their faces expressed everything. Like the joy and pleasure that draws on the face of a child when seeing his/her mother after many years of separation. Their sense of closeness to their homeland showed their enthusiasm and pleasure beyond description.

“How happy we are, for our salvation from ISIS and reaching the freedom fighters,” the Yazidi women repeatedly said. “We will never forget those who have sacrificed their lives to liberate us from the clutches of ISIS,” the women added.

On the other hand, the SDF fighters evacuated the liberated civilians into safe areas so they can be safely brought home. “We will fight terrorism everywhere to free the last child and woman from the hands of ISIS,” the combatants reassured the Yazidi women.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Feb 19, 2019 2:24 am

'Caliphate Cub' survivor fights to save
other Yazidis forced to join Islamic State


Sufian, a Yazidi teen who escaped from ISIS, says he has been unable to free his younger brother from the militants
By Tom Westcott

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his humble family home, the crutches upon which he now relies propped against the wall, Sufian holds out his phone. A dated, school photo appears on the screen: his younger brother Perwesh, 16.

Sufian is a former "Caliphate Cub," a member of Iraq's Yazidi religious community who was forced to fight as part of the Islamic State (ISIS) group. Perwesh is still fighting with the militant group.

"He was so affected by ISIS brainwashing, he'd become completely radicalised and indoctrinated with the ISIS mentality," said 18-year-old Sufian, whose last name Middle East Eye agreed to withhold to protect him and his family.

"To be honest, I was afraid of him. Imagine that; I was afraid of my younger brother, but a lot of Yazidis brainwashed by ISIS killed their own brothers if they refused to convert."

When ISIS swept through northern Iraq in 2014, Sufian and Perwesh were amongst thousands of members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority that were abducted from the town of Sinjar and surrounding areas.

Yazidi women were forced into sexual slavery, and young Yazidi boys like Sufian were indoctrinated with ISIS's strict interpretation of Islam and trained as fighters.

The last time Sufian saw Perwesh was in early 2017, on a front line near the Iraqi border with Syria.

"We had just 30 minutes together, but we couldn't talk about our family because he believed all Yazidis were Kaffir [unbelievers]. He urged me not to try and escape," Sufian told MEE.

'We were just children'

Sufian had already tried to escape from IS once, in 2015, with a small group of Yazidi friends. But they were captured, imprisoned and tortured, he said.

"They beat us a lot, especially on our feet, and accused of us being spies. I couldn't even stand up because of the pain. I was 15. We were just children and we were terrified," Sufian recalled.

He said ISIS decided to kill them, but an ISIS emir from Mosul intervened and instead put the boys through a year of intense Islamic indoctrination, before sending them to a military training camp in Syria's Hama province.

There, Sufian said they were trained by Uzbek, Russian, Chechen and Iranian-Kurdish commanders. The boys went through four hours of gruelling physical training every morning starting at 5am. After breakfast, they trained with assorted weapons and, after lunch, they were schooled in military strategy.

"They brainwashed me completely. I converted to Islam, I prayed five times a day," he said, adding that he was in a fragile mental state.

"Some Yazidis memorised the whole Quran and others became suicide bombers. One of my close friends underwent six months of explosives training and made bombs for ISIS."

At this point, Sufian's father, Rashid, a soft-spoken farmer, leans forward. Two boys from their extended family were suicide bombers during the battle for Mosul, he said, quietly.

Rashid told MEE he has 12 children, then corrected himself. "I have 13, but one is with ISIS," he said. "It's worse for our neighbours; they still have 20 family members with ISIS."

Two of Sufian's young cousins are also still in the hands of ISIS.

A 'living death'

After his training, Sufian said, he was sent to the front lines in Syria's Deir ez-Eor province.

"As a forced ISIS fighter, you die 100 times a day. Each day is like a living death," he said.

As part of the Katiba Shingal (Sinjar Brigade), in which each military position was manned by four ISIS fighters and two Yazidis, he fought in three major battles before being injured by an air strike on a border front line.

Although his broken leg was not a severe injury, with no functioning hospitals in the desert area the wound blackened and became gangrenous. His injury worsened by the day, Sufian said, forcing ISIS to help him seek medical treatment.

He said the militant group made him a fake Syrian identification card and two ISIS fighters took him to a Syrian-Kurdish hospital in the town of Hasakah, in the country's northeast. The ISIS members presented themselves as civilians at the hospital, telling staff Sufian was injured in an air strike, he said.

"I urgently needed a blood transfusion, but the hospital had no blood, so they sent the two ISIS guys out to get blood from somewhere," Sufian said.

"And then a commander from the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is fighting ISIS in Syria] came to talk to me, and I told him in Kurdish that I was a Yazidi captive and the guys with me were ISIS."

The PKK fighter gave his own blood to save him, Sufian said, and his forces "dealt with" the two ISIS fighters when they returned. Sufian said he does not know what happened to them.

After a month in hospital, during which time his gangrenous leg had to be amputated at the thigh, Sufian was arrested by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and imprisoned for 34 days.

His father visited him in prison, with childhood photos and proof of his identity, and eventually in March he returned to Iraq.

De-radicalising fellow Yazidis

Since his escape from ISIS, Sufian has been working to de-radicalise other Yazidis forced to fight for ISIS in Syria.

So far, he has managed to de-radicalise 14 boys and help to bring them home, he said. The Yazidi friend he helped most recently was smuggled out of Iraq just over a month ago.

"I hope the international community will help rescue the Yazidis still with ISIS and also understand that they were forced to fight with ISIS and they're not like real ISIS," Sufian told MEE.

The process of de-radicalising Yazidi boys who were forced to join ISIS's ranks can take between a month-and-a-half to two months, Sufian said.

He said the first step is connecting to the boys on WhatsApp, where they message back and forth in Arabic, as many of the Yazidis, forced by ISIS to speak only Arabic, have forgotten their Kurdish mother tongue or reject it as a kaffir [infidel] language.

Although many Yazidis who have been forced to fight with IS are on some of the group's final and most dangerous front lines, Sufian said the trust-building process cannot be rushed.

Crucially, Sufian tells the enslaved Yazidi boys that he is living proof that one of ISIS's main threats - which is used to keep them with the group - is a lie.

ISIS leaders tell the boys that any Yazidi who convert to Islam and fight with ISIS will, at worst, be killed by the Iraqi government, which routinely hands out the death penalty to former ISIS fighters, Sufian said. At best, Yazidis returning from ISIS will be rejected and outlawed by their own community, the militants say.

Instead, Sufian tells the boys that despite returning as a wounded, former ISIS fighter, he has been welcomed back into his family and home country, and is respected within his community - and they can be, too.

"Sufian has done amazing work and helped us a lot because he had been moved around many different locations, so he knew where a lot of the Yazidis were," said Shereen Shingal, a young woman who helps smuggle enslaved Yazidis out of Syria. "He talks to a lot of our boys in IS and helps to alter their mindset."

After ISIS, a new life of fear

Still, despite his efforts, Sufian has not been able to de-radicalise his own brother, and his family members say they don't know if they will ever see Perwesh again.

"I’ve tried talking to my brother, too, but it's hopeless. He is completely brainwashed," Sufian said.

And while Sufian was welcomed home after his escape from ISIS, adjusting to normal life has not been easy.

"I've done nothing since I came back. There's nothing to do," he said, flatly. "And I'm afraid to do anything or go anywhere because there are ISIS spies everywhere."

An international organisation made him a prosthetic limb in Iraqi Kurdistan. But other than that, Sufian said he has received no psychological help or support, and no one has ever spoken to him about his own de-radicalisation.

Meanwhile, Sufian's family has done everything it can to help him adjust to normal civilian life, but he remains wanted by ISIS, leaving his loved ones terrified the group might abduct him again.

One of the main roads running south from the northern Iraqi town of Baaj, where self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi first called on people to join ISIS, runs close to the family's house.

"He is very much in danger. We never let him go out late because ISIS have spies everywhere," his father said.

An ISIS emir called him once, Rashid told MEE, saying they had tried to break Sufian out of the Hasakah hospital but were unable to penetrate the SDF's security. The emir warned him that ISIS wanted Sufian back.

"It's not safe for him to go out," Rashid said. "And he has helped a lot of his friends in ISIS, and this de-radicalisation work puts him at very great risk."

For Rashid, the only safe place for his son is abroad.

That's a sentiment echoed by Sufian himself. "To be honest," he said, "now I just want to leave Iraq."

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/cali ... amic-state
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:05 pm

For Yazidi survivors of ISIS killings nightmares go on

Ever since Islamic State visited death and destruction on their villages in northern Iraq nearly five years ago, Yazidis Daoud Ibrahim and Kocher Hassan have had trouble sleeping

For Hassan, 39, who was captured, it is her three missing children, and three years of imprisonment at the hands of the jihadist group.

For Ibrahim, 42, who escaped, it is the mass grave that he returned to find on his ravaged land.

“They burnt one house down, blew up the other, they torched the olive trees two three times...There is nothing left,” the father of eight told Reuters.

More than 3,000 other members of their minority sect were killed in 2014 in an onslaught that the United Nations described as genocidal.

Ibrahim and Hassan lived to tell of their suffering, but like other survivors, they have not moved on.

She will never set foot in her village of Rambousi again. “My sons built that house. I can’t go back without them...Their school books are still there, their clothes,” she said.

‘THEY WANT TO BE BURIED’

As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to announce the demise of the Islamist group in Syria and Iraq, U.N. data suggests many of those it displaced in the latter country have, like Hassan, not returned home.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim and his family live in a barn next to the pile of rubble that was once their home. He grows wheat because the olive trees will need years to grow again. No one is helping him rebuild, so he is doing it himself, brick by brick.

“Life is bad. There is no aid,” he said sitting on the edge of the collapsed roof which he frequently rummages under to find lost belongings. On this day, it was scarves, baby clothes and a photo album.

“Every day that I see this mass grave I get ten more gray hairs,” he said.

The grave, discovered in 2015 just outside nearby Sinjar city, contains the remains of more than 70 elderly women from the village of Kocho, residents say.

“I hear the cries of their spirits at the end of the night. They want to be buried, but the government won’t remove their remains.” They and their kin also want justice, Ibrahim adds.

When the militants came, thousands of Yazidis fled on foot towards Sinjar mountain. More than four years later, some 2,500 families - including Hassan and five of her daughters - still live in the tents that are scattered along the hills that weave their way towards the summit.

The grass is green on the meadows where children run after sheep and the women pick wild herbs.

But the peaceful setting masks deep-seated fears about the past and the future.

GRATEFUL FOR THE SUN

Until a year and a half ago, Hassan and five of her children were kept in an underground prison in Raqqa with little food and in constant fear of torture.

She doesn’t know why Islamic State freed her and the girls, then aged one to six, and hasn’t learnt the fate of the three remaining children: two boys Fares and Firas, who would be 23 and 19 now, and Aveen, a girl who would be 13.

There is no electricity or running water in the camp where they live today. She doesn’t remember when her children last ate fruit. “Life here is very difficult but I thank God that we are able to see the sun,” she said.

During the day, her children go to school and are happy, but at night “they are afraid of their own shadow”, and she herself has nightmares.

“Last night, I dreamt they were slaughtering my child,” she said.

Mahmoud Khalaf, her husband, says Islamic State not only destroyed their livelihoods. The group broke the trust between Yazidis and the communities of different faiths and ethnicities they had long lived alongside.

“There is no protection. Those who killed us and held us captive and tormented us have returned to their villages,” Khalaf, 40, said referring to the neighboring Sunni Arab villages who the Yazidis say conspired with the militants.

“We have no choice but to stay here...They are stronger than us.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq ... SKCN1Q80X3

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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Feb 21, 2019 11:14 pm

Survivors of ISIS genocide have nothing

As the war against ISIS enters its final phases the victims of ISIS are still suffering

Hundreds of thousands remain in displaced persons camps and cities and towns across Iraq and Syria are still in ruins. Many religious minorities, especially Yazidis and Christians, cannot return to their homes, which were often laced with ISIS bombs or destroyed.

ISIS carried out its worst mass murder between June and August 2014, targeting Bedouin tribes in Syria, Shi’ites in Camp Speicher and Tal Afar, and then Christians in Mosul and Nineveh plains in Iraq. In August 2014, Yazidis in Sinjar awoke to news that Islamic State was attacking villages across areas of northern Iraq where their minority group lives.

Within days more than 300,000 Yazidis had to flee and more than 10,000 were kidnapped by ISIS. In their most brutal and cruel act of a long list of atrocities, ISIS separated the Yazidi men and women and put the women on buses to be sold into slavery. In scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust they then took the men and elderly women and systematically murdered them, dumping their bodies into mass graves across northern Iraq’s Sinjar region.

Eventually more than 30 mass graves would be found.

I was able to visit two of these mass graves soon after they were discovered in December 2015 when the area was liberated by Kurdish fighters. I photographed the destruction in Sinjar city and refugees who had fled to Sinjar mountain. Earlier this month a photographer named Khalid Al Mousily went to Sinjar and photographed some of the same areas.

His photographs reveal that almost four years later almost nothing has changed.

In December 2015 the mass grave sites had been recently discovered. Some of their locations were known because Yazidis who had fled to Sinjar mountain were able to look down on the plains below and watch as ISIS murdered their relatives. In rare cases survivors of the massacres, hiding under the bodies or having escaped somehow, brought news back.

There are exact parallels to the mass murder of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen during the Holocaust. I was struck by the fact that the mass graves looked identical to photos I’d seen from the Shoah. I was not prepared however to see the matted human hair, the skulls, the soccer jerseys and blindfolds the people wore, decaying on the ground. When I arrived it was more than a year after the bodies were dumped in the ground. Rain had brought the bones and human remains up to the surface.

People said that stray dogs had eaten at the bodies. And this happened in August 2014, before the world’s eyes with basically no attempt to stop the mass killing, despite the fact that drones could easily have seen what was going on. From 1941 to 2014, nothing changed, except the fact that ISIS used smart phones to make videos cheering the killing, videos uploaded to social media.

Remarkably the photos that Mousily took show that little has been done to really preserve the locations of the mass graves. In one location a photo from February 2019 shows a sign with the logo of ICMP, the International Commission on Missing Persons. According to ICMP they began a program in January 2017 with support from Canada to government authorities involved in Sinjar.

In February 2018 a press release says that for the first time DNA was able to identify a missing person from a mass grave. But overall the photo of the mass grave from 2019 shows that not much work has been done to preserve the site. As in December 2015 there isn’t a wall or fence to protect the remains. This is a testament to the lack of investment by the 79-member international Coalition that is supposed to be combating ISIS.

Another photo from Mousily shows a destroyed house in Sinjar and a man picking through its ruins. When I was in Sinjar in December 2015 the city was still covered with improvised explosives and booby-traps ISIS had left behind. We were not allowed to enter side streets and were warned about the dangers. De-mining teams from Kurdish peshmerga units, some of them with training by the Coalition, were slowly going through the ISIS tunnels to remove ordinance. In 2019 it appear that the city is still in ruins and not fit for civilian life. This is despite years in which investment could have come from the international community or local authorities.

A third and fourth photo from 2019 show Yazidis refugees who fled to Sinjar mountain. In 2014 the mountain was a place of shelter and ISIS was not able to take the area, which was defended by Yazidi fighters. Heroic Iraqi pilots helped airlift some off the people and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a group of Kurdish fighters from Syria, helped people flee to safety. But tens of thousands of Yazidis chose to stay on the mountain, in miserable conditions, resisting ISIS and within eyesight of their former homes below. When I got there in December 2015 the destitute people had nothing. They were living in tents and got water from wells. One clinic served more than 10,000 people with basic medical needs. There was no education system, no hospitals, nothing.

In 2019 it appears basically the same. People still live in tents, some of them reinforced over the years. Other tents have become shacks. Life appears still miserable and lacking all basic services. Yet this area has been liberated for years. ISIS was removed from the plains below between 2015 and 2017. And yet despite investment pouring in to some other areas, such as Mosul, there seems to be no investment for Sinjar.

The story of Sinjar is symbolic of the war against ISIS more broadly. While the war has largely been won, there is little interest by the international community in winning the peace. Although the Coalition talks about “stabilization” in its meetings, such as the recent one in Washington on February 6, there is little concrete discussion about investing in places like Sinjar.

The US involvement in the war against ISIS began when news of the ISIS genocide in Sinjar reached Washington. “I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain,” US President Barack Obama said on August 7, 2014. The scenes of people dying on Mount Sinjar and ISIS crimes motivated the first airstrikes and humanitarian aid. But years later much of that interest in Sinjar has gone.

Link to Article - Photos:

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS- ... ter-581208
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sat Feb 23, 2019 11:16 pm

SDF freed 3 Yazidi children from ISIS

SDF fighters have freed 3 Yazidi children who had been abducted by ISIS from Shengal in 2014

A refugee group of 800 people who were evacuated from ISIS occupied area in Baghouz have reached the Hawl Camp in Heseke. It came out that the freed civilians include 3 Yazidi children from Shengal who had been abducted by ISIS during the genocidal onslaught on the Yazidi town in August, 2014.

The rescued Yazidi children are 11-year-old Samir Xidir, 9-year-old Zinar Eto and 10-year-old Hediye Mihsin.

While Samir and Hediye are in good state of health, Zinar has been taken under treatment at the Hikmê Hospital in Heseke.

Yazidi House administrators who came to the camp for the three children have put them under their protection. North and East Syria Yazidi Affairs Administration official Mehmûd Memî stated that the three children will be reunited with their families in Shengal.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:31 am

ISIS slave escapes caliphate with five
year old son after five failed attempts


Faryal was kidnapped along with thousands of other Yazidi women and forced into sexual slavery

One of the Yazidi women abducted by Isis in 2014 has escaped the caliphate with her five-year-old son after spending four years as an Isis slave.

“He was terrified,” she said, recounting their escape this month. “I held his hand and we just kept walking.”

The walk to freedom lasted 53 hours, and the little boy cried all the way. It wasn't their first escape attempt – Faryal had tried five times before to flee Isis – but they would be shot on the spot if the militants caught them now.

They passed corpses in the darkness, and when exhaustion overwhelmed them, they huddled together and slept on the dusty path. Faryal whispered reassurances to her five-year-old son, telling him that his grandparents were waiting and that, after four years as prisoners of Isis, they were finally going home. He wouldn't believe her.

As members of Iraq's Yazidi minority, a largely Kurdish-speaking religious group, the pair had escaped what the UN has called a genocide.

Isis militants kidnapped thousands of Yazidis on a single day in August 2014, massacring the men and dumping them in mass graves, and forcing the women into sexual slavery.

During her captivity, Faryal said she had six different owners, at times being passed on when a fighter wanted a new sexual partner or simply to settle a debt. “Monsters who treated us like animals,” is how she described them.

The atrocities committed against the Yazidis had initially prompted the US to launch airstrikes against the militants and begin a military campaign to roll back Isis's caliphate that now, four years later, could end within days. US-backed forces have the last Isis holdouts surrounded in the eastern Syrian hamlet of Baghouz.

In photographs, taken by aid workers on the night of her escape, a male companion hides his face but Faryal looks straight out at the camera. Her hazel eyes are fixed in a quiet stare. Her son's face is wet with tears, and he is sobbing. “I can't put into words how I was feeling at that moment,” she said. “All I could think was: 'Please, take me away from here.”

Faryal, 20, told her story last week in the northern Syrian town of Amuda after being transferred there by the US-backed Kurdish forces that rescued them. Throughout the interview, she kept a watchful eye on Hoshyar, her son, pulling him close as he cried and then trying, without success, to make him laugh.

Details of her account were corroborated by members of her family in northern Iraq and through a team of Yazidi activists that had communicated with her secretly for months before the escape in attempts to smuggle her to safety.

The day before Faryal's life changed forever in 2014 had dawned like any other in the Iraqi village of Tel Banat. She pottered around the house looking after her infant son Hoshyar, she recalled. By midday, the sun was roasting, and although rumours had swirled for weeks that Isis forces were drawing closer, few in Tel Banat were aware of the coming storm.

The Islamist militants arrived at dusk.

“We couldn't run fast enough,” Faryal remembered, describing how she and 10 members of her extended family had piled into a car and joined an epic exodus. Yazidi towns and villages around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq emptied within hours as more than 100,000 people fled to higher ground. Faryal and her husband, Hashem, made it only a few miles before militants blocked their path.

Yazidis have long faced persecution from more powerful religious groups for their beliefs, in part because of a false but commonly-held impression that they worship the sun, or the devil. There are fewer than one million Yazidis worldwide, and according to the UN, Isis had intended to entirely wipe out those within their reach.

Yazidi men and boys who had reached puberty were separated from the women and other children and often shot dead at roadsides. Women were bused to temporary holding sites and then sold to Isis fighters at slave markets.

Isis clerics had decided that having slaves was religiously sanctioned, institutionalising sexual violence across their caliphate. Women have reported being tied to beds during daily assaults. They were sold from man to man. Gang rape was common.

Many women and girls committed suicide in the opening months of captivity, according to Yazidi rights groups. Others harmed themselves to appear less appealing to fighters who might consider buying them.

Faryal recalled that an Isis fighter who was Iraqi and called himself Abu Kattab was her worst abuser. Hoshyar was abused, too, Faryal said. Abu Kattab beat him so badly there were hand prints on his face. Another had forced the boy's arm onto a hot plate.

“He was so small, but for some reason the fighters hated him,” Faryal said. “I could never explain to him why.”

As the boy sat beside his mother last week, his eyes moved slowly from side to side as if scanning the room for threats. His blond hair was cut in jagged chunks. He did not speak and he did not smile.

At its height in 2014, Isis's self-proclaimed caliphate covered territory in Syria and Iraq the size of Britain, and the movement drew recruits from around the world. In the intervening years, thousands of Yazidi women fled the territory held by the militants, but Faryal couldn't escape.

With each unsuccessful attempt to escape, the punishment grew harsher, she said. By 2017, she said, she had given up. Keeping her head down and accepting the abuse seemed the only way to keep Hoshyar alive, and the child was fraying badly. Their owners starved him and often forbade him to go to the toilet.

“I knew that if I fought back, they would take him from me forever,” she said. “They did that to so many women.”

There was one final act of resistance, though: a tattoo of her husband's name, inked in kohl and water on the back of her right hand. It took five days to complete, and the pain lasted even longer. It was, she sometimes told herself, a reminder of a life that could still be hers. At other times, she lost all hope.

In its final months, as the caliphate shrank to a sliver, her captors were moving weekly to outrun US airstrikes. But the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were closing in.

Food supplies ran so low that Faryal said she sometimes went days without eating, spending her money instead on small sandwiches for Hoshyar.

When the pair was struck by shrapnel in the Syrian hamlet of Baghouz in January, no medical care was available. The village clinic had been abandoned, left littered with empty drug packets and syringes.

“We were pushed out onto the street, still bleeding. There were no drugs left, and we saw people in the road being left for dead,” she said.

Their chance to escape came when several Isis fighters grew desperate and plotted to use Faryal and Hoshyar as their ticket out. After years of abusive behavior, the militants decided to style themselves as the Yazidis' guardians and surrender to the forces surrounding their last stronghold.

At 2.30pm one afternoon, they all set out from their tent in Baghouz. An Uzbek fighter and his family pushed the young mother out in front of them as they started down the dusty path. They walked for two days in the cold, following the only path out of what had once been the caliphate.

At 8pm on the second day, they heard shouting. Beams from flashlights bounced off the sky. It was the US-backed soldiers.

Isis fighters raised their hands above their heads and cried out for mercy. They claimed that they were helping a Yazidi escape and had kept her safe, according to someone present at the screening point that night. The appeal fell on deaf ears, and the men were detained as Faryal and Hoshyar carried on walking.

It took three days for the pair to finally believe they might be free. They still fear that the extremists will come back for them.

“As long as I'm alive, I'll be scared of them,” Faryal said, tensing her shoulders as she gripped her tattooed hand with the other. “My spirit might be strong, but my mind will never rest.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 94581.html
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:43 pm

Occupation forces demolished
the Sheikh Hemid Tomb in Afrin


The occupation forces in Afrin have demolished the Sheikh Hemid Tomb, sacred for Yazidi community, in a village of Afrin

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The Turkish invasion army and allied gangs continue their genocidal attacks in Afrin where several areas on World Heritage List have already been demolished and destroyed.

The occupation forces have demolished the Sheikh Hemid Tomb in the village of Qestel Cindo in Afrin’s Shera district. The tomb was a sacred site for the Yazidi community.

The Sheikh Berekat tomb in Ayn Dara, the Qere Cirne Tomb in Meydanke village and the Sheikh Adî Tomb in Qibar village, sacred sites for Yazidis, are among the historical structures destroyed during and after the occupation attacks of the Turkish state against Afrin.

Last week, the Jabhat al-Sham militants vandalized the Yezidi shrine of Sheikh Hemid in the village of Qestela Cindi in the Shera sub-district of Afrin, local sourced confirmed to Rudaw.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/21022019
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:59 pm

Yazidi House:
We will get Yazidi children to Shengal Council

Cizire Region Yazidi House Council Member Mehmud Resho said they have received the 11 Yazidi children rescued from ISIS gangs and that the children will be taken to the Shengal Council

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SDF has rescued 11 Yazidi children along with the thousands of civilians held hostage by ISIS.

SDF General Command turned over the rescued children to the Cizire Region Yazidi House Council to be reunited with their families.

The rescued children are: Sifiyan Xelef Sileman, Mahir Xelil Ibrahim, Diler Eli Refo, Wesim Ismail Ibrahim, Iyad Hisen Shemo, Mustefa Ehmed, Mazin Selim, Xesman Semir, Dilvan Xelef, Secad Ebas and Sedam Hisen.

Cizire Region Yazidi House Council Member Mehmud Resho said: “The rescued children are with us now. We have offered treatment for those who needed medical attention and we have seen to their needs.”

Mehmud Resho said they are in contact with the Shengal Council to reunite the children with their families.

Rehso said the children are physically well, but have been affected psychologically by the violence by ISIS gangs.

Mehmud Resho thanked the SDF and said: “We are thankful that the SDF has rescued civilians, especially our children. Many civilians rescued to date were brought to us by the SDF. ISIS gangs still have many Yazidis captive. We thank the SDF once again for their efforts to rescue civilians.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Feb 26, 2019 2:04 am

We are now free: Yazidis fleeing ISIS
start over in female-only commune


Berivan runs over to join in the dancing, her traditional gold dress catching the winter sunlight. The 15-year-old Yazidi clasps hands with her best friend and stands among the line of women stamping their feet to a Kurdish pop song

Berivan and her mother are from Sinjar in Iraq, the Yazidi homeland, but like thousands of other Yazidis they were kidnapped by Islamic State in 2014 when the group stormed across the border from Syria.

Far from here, in the eastern desert, Isis has almost lost control of its last stronghold, Baghuz, but there are at least 3,000 Yazidi women and girls whose fate is unknown.

During the genocide, Yazidi men were rounded up and shot then dumped in mass graves. The women were taken to be sold in Isis’s slave markets, many passed from fighter to fighter, who inflicted physical and sexual abuse.

Yazidi children have been brainwashed and rights groups say suicide among captives is common. Even for those who manage to escape after years of enslavement and rape, many struggle to survive without an income or identity papers.

Berivan and her mother have lost the other members of their family. But at a new women’s commune near Qamishli, in north-eastern Syria, they have had a chance to start over.

“I like it here,” she says. “I love going to school, I love mathematics. And I’m going to be a hairdresser when I grow up.”

Jinwar is a female-only community, set up by the women of the local Kurdish-run administration to create a space where women can live “free of the constraints of the oppressive power structures of patriarchy and capitalism”. It opened in November and 12 of its 30 adobe brick houses are home to Kurdish, Yazidi and Arab families.

I remember how disgusting Arab neighbours turned on the Yazidis

The women built their own houses, bake their own bread and tend to the livestock and farmland, cooking and eating together. On Saturday, people from the neighbouring villages have been invited to a graduation celebration for a group of local women who had attended a course on natural medicines at Jinwar’s education centre.

Over chicken and rice, and later music and dancing, residents discuss how the newly planted apricot, pomegranate and olive trees are doing.

“We built this place ourselves, brick by brick,” says 35-year-old Barwa Darwish, who came to Jinwar with her seven children after her village in Deir Ezzor province was freed from Isis and her husband, who joined the fight against the group, was killed in action.

“Under ISIS we were strangled and now we are free. But even before that, women stayed at home. We didn’t go out and work. In Jinwar, I’ve seen that women can stand alone.”

Jinwar grew out of the democratic ideology that has fuelled the creation of Rojava, a Kurdish-run statelet in north-eastern Syria, since the civil war broke out in 2011.

The area has largely thrived despite the presence of enemies on all sides: Isis, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and Turkey, which regards the Kurdish YPG fighters as a terrorist organisation.

The women’s revolution, as it is known, is a significant part of Rojava’s philosophy. Angered by the atrocities committed by Isis, Kurdish women formed their own fighting units. Later, Arab and Yazidi recruits joined them on the front lines to liberate their sisters.

But at home, many parts of Kurdish society are still deeply conservative. Some of the women now in Jinwar have left arranged marriages and domestic abuse. Those dynamics, as well as the legacy of Syria’s brutal eight-year war have to be unlearned at Jinwar.

“When the families first arrived, the Arab children wouldn’t play with the Kurdish children,” says Nujin, one of the international volunteers working at the village. “But even in just two months you can see the change. The children are already so much happier.”

Berivan’s mother, Darsim, was mute when she arrived at Jinwar, a side-effect of trauma. Little by little, she has started to form words again. “The village is the best rehabilitation for the things these families have suffered,” Nujin says.

Jinwar is not finished yet: there are gardens to plant and an empty library waiting for books. The community is still coming up with ideas. Behind the education centre there is a swimming pool that will be filled with water in the summer. Most of the residents will get to use a pool – the reserve of only men in most of the Middle East – for the first time.

The women have also voted for driving lessons and to start a sewing business.

There are plans for a second commune in Deir Ezzor, an Arab province that is still the scene of fierce fighting to destroy ISIS – but there is also a sense that what has been built at Jinwar is fragile and could be taken away.

It is not clear what will happen when US troops leave the area in a few months. Renewed fighting is a possibility.

“This place is peaceful and a refuge from the war,” Nujin says. “So how can we bring guns here if we needed to defend ourselves? I hope Jinwar never has to face that.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... nwar-syria
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Feb 26, 2019 2:15 am

Yazidis girl 10 pregnant after being
raped multiple times by jihadis


Marwa Khedr was only 10 years old

She was pregnant. The victim of countless rapes by fanatical Islamic State jihadis.

Her whereabouts are unknown

“There are a lot of girls like her,” Ziad Avdal, a former teacher who runs safe houses for Yazidis escaping ISIS, told the Daily Mail.

“It is not just terrible that she is pregnant — these young girls may have been raped by 100 men before they become pregnant.”

Yazidi volunteers still search for missing relatives. Thousands were slaughtered by Islamic State.

Marwa was kidnapped when death cult members came into her Yazidi village in Iraq. Residents were taken at gunpoint, the men buried alive.

Islamic State high-fliers preferred women and girls aged 10 to 20 for their twisted pleasure. The last time her family saw Marwa, she was a prisoner in the former caliphate capital of Raqqa.

Months later, her aunt told the newspaper, she was spotted by a family friend who said she was pregnant. Today, she remains missing.

https://torontosun.com/news/world/yazid ... by-jihadis
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Tue Feb 26, 2019 2:36 am

Shingal returnees demand
closure of Iraq govt office


More than 200 journalists and civil activists in Shingal have demanded the closure of the Iraqi federal government’s office in the city, alleging it has failed to provide services and does not work in the interests of the war ravaged region

Some 13,000 Yezidi families have returned to their homes in Shingal since its liberation from Islamic State (ISIS) rule. Many complain of chronic service shortages.

Eighty percent of the city was damaged in the battle to defeat the jihadists.

The acting mayor of Shingal, Farhad Hamid, said: “Those running the Council of Ministers office do not work for the interests of the Shingal people.”

Government employees are not from Shingal, he says. As a result, they lack basic knowledge about its people and the region.

The Iraqi government’s office was opened three months ago at the request of residents and local authorities.

Shingal is a disputed territory and home to a substantial Yezidi community. It was seized by ISIS in 2014 following a Peshmerga retreat, but was later liberated.

Shingal saw heinous ISIS atrocities. Militants abducted thousands of Yezidis, forcing the women into sexual slavery and slaughtering the men.

Saed Batush, a civil activist, told Rudaw the Iraqi government office does not give the people of Shingal a voice in Baghdad.

“The office has just become a place for them to take pictures and eat in it,” he claimed.

“Unfortunately, they are not at the level we want. They have no experience,” Batush added.

Life is tough for the families who have returned to Shingal, living without healthcare or schools more than two years after ISIS was routed.

Walid Umer, head of the Council of Ministers’ office, rejected the claims, insisting his staff provide many projects to serve Shingal in terms of reconstruction.

“Maybe they are not dissatisfied with service projects carried out in this area. It is clear that the situation in terms of education and services is not good,” he admitted.

But “the whole Iraq is suffering from this situation,” he said.

“Despite shortcomings, our work is going very well here. We are working to pass the current difficult time,” he added.

Khonaf Hajji, a resident of Shingal, told Rudaw: “By God, life here is difficult – no gas, no doctor. When we go to the hospital, there is nothing. By God’s name, whenever we go there and get an injection we do not find it. There are no teachers. Our children go to schools but there are no teachers.”

Another returnee, Kheri Shivan, said: “By God there are no doctors, no streets, no water, no gas. There is not even one clinic here. There is no one for injections. There is no medicine. There is nothing here. Services are zero.”

Iraq has estimated national reconstruction will cost $100 billion.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/250220194
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:16 am

Yazidi children rescued from
ISIS tell what they experienced


Yazidi children, rescued from ISIS gangs, expressed that they were forced to be Islamized, that they were staying in military camps and that they had undergone military training under the name of Eşbalen Xilafe

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ISIS gangs kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and children in their attacks against Shengal back in 2014. The gangs that forced the Yazidi children to convert into Islam also educated the children under the name “Eşbalen Xilafe”.

Hundreds of Yazidi women and children were rescued in the Operation Cizire Storm. SDF fighters finally saved 11 Yazidi children from gangs.

Sedam Hisen, a 15-year-old boy is from Shengal’s Dokrî village. Hisen said, “I was 10 when the gangs kidnapped me. They first took me to the Tal Afar. Then they separated the women and the men, and left the children alone. We went through Mosul, Raqqa and Hajin and finally came to Baghouz.”

Hisen, who said that the gangs had forced them to convert to Islam and that they were thrown into the dungeon if they opposed the gangs, also stated that the gangs were trying to indoctrinate them with dirty ideas. Hisên said “We were staying in military camps, taking military and intellectual training. They impressed their dirty ideas on us.”

Hisen who continued: “I spoke to my mother and siblings with the help of the Yazidi House in the Cizire region. I will see them soon. I have missed them too much” finished his words with “ISIS killed my father and kept me away from my family for five years.”

“All I remember is they beat me every day”

10-year-old Iyad Hisên is from the village of Herdanê and is sick. He explains the 5 years he was held by the gangs: “I don't remember how they took me, because I was 5. They beat me every day.”

Iyad Hisên continued: “No news from my family. I hate ISIS because they kidnapped me and took me away from my family.”

Dr. Diyar Reşo, member of the Kurdish Red Crescent who made the health checks of the children, said that the children have some diseases due to malnutrition.

Resco added: “We carried out the children's physical health checks. They have no good psychology due to the bad treatment they were subject to during their captivity at the hands of the gangs.
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Re: Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

PostAuthor: Anthea » Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:54 pm

Trained to Kill at 13: Kidnapped Boy Who
Escaped Islamic State Prison in Deir Ezzor


A 13-year-old boy, kidnapped by Islamic State, was trained to kill and even conduct a suicide attack before he managed to escape from the group’s prison in Baghuz, east Deir Ezzor, footage shared on February 27 shows

Kurdish news outlet ANHA shows Milad Hussain telling them that he and his friends were playing football in their home town in Sinjar when Islamic State kidnapped them and their mothers and took them to Mosul city, in Iraq.

The boys were then separated from their mothers and transferred to a prison in Tal Afar city, about 63 km west of Mosul.“They beat us and forced us to worship their religion and taught us the Quran, religious law and prayers. Then they sent us to a camp, where they would beat us if we didn’t study by heart,” he recalls. Clad in military clothing,

Milad claims that there were 21 boys in the prison but that he and another boy managed to escape. “I want to see my mother and my siblings. I have not seen them for four years,” he adds. ANHA’s report added that Milad said Islamic State trained them to fight and to conduct suicide attacks. Footage shared on February 26 shows Milad and 15-year-old Fawaz Khuder after they escaped the last Islamic State enclave in east Deir Ezzor and arriving to SDF-held areas.

Islamic State kidnapped thousands of women and children during an assault on the region of Sinjar, also known as Shingal, in 2014. Women were often kept as slaves, the United Nations (UN) said.

A UN report on June 2016, said that Islamic State had committed genocide against the Yazidi population and had "subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities.” Islamic State used boys as part of its propaganda narrative, calling them the “Cubs of the Caliphate.” The militia shared videos showing them training in camps and conducing executions.

https://www.ntnews.com.au/news/national ... d0fafefb66
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