In 2014, Lamya Haji Bashar was a 15-year-old woman in Kocho, a sleepy Yazidi farming village in northern Iraq. On Sunday, August 3, 2014, her life changed forever when ISIS swept through the region.
ISIS fighters killed her neighbors and friends, entire families, women and children. Thousands of Yazidis fell victim to mass executions and disappeared into mass graves. And thousands of Yazidi women and girls were sold into slavery. The UN would later recognize ISIS as the perpetrator of a genocide against the Yazidi community.
Bashar herself was sold as a modern-day slave to ISIS. She escaped and is now sharing the brutal truth of violence against women.… Seguir leyendo »
Le 3 août 2014, l’Etat islamique lançait ses exactions contre les Yézidis en Irak, massacrait des centaines d’hommes, réduisait de milliers de femmes à l’esclavage et embrigadait autant d’enfants. Quatre ans plus tard, plus de 3 000 femmes et enfants sont encore portés disparus et 300 000 Yézidis vivent dans des camps au nord de l’Irak, sans ressources et sans perspective d’avenir. Quatre ans plus tard, il semblerait que le peuple yézidi se trouve aussi face à des bouleversements profonds, aussi bien vis-à-vis de ses relations avec le monde, au sein de la communauté elle-même, qu’à l’égard de ce qui semble être devenu un nouveau pilier, la femme.… Seguir leyendo »
Three years ago I was one of thousands of Yazidi women kidnapped by the Islamic State and sold into slavery. I endured rape, torture and humiliation at the hands of multiple militants before I escaped. I was relatively lucky; many Yazidis went through worse than I did and for much longer. Many are still missing. Many have been killed.
Once I escaped, I felt that it was my duty to tell the world about the brutality of the Islamic State. Yazidi women hoped that recounting our experiences of mass murder, rape and enslavement would bring attention to the Yazidi genocide. We received sympathy and solidarity all over the world, but now what we really need is concrete action to get justice and allow our community to return to its homeland.… Seguir leyendo »
The carnage in Iraq continues. Yet another terrorist attack took place today in Baghdad, the latest in a series of such atrocities that have hit the capital and other parts of the country over the past week. Isis is undergoing a losing battle in Mosul, its last remaining stronghold in Iraq, and it is expected to lose control of the city in the coming months. However, it still has a deadly capacity to carry out terrorist acts. Even without its so-called caliphate, Isis will continue to undermine stability in the country.
The bombings over the past week have barely registered in the international media and the conscience of the international community.… Seguir leyendo »
Un banquete en honor de los muertos, así empieza la celebración del Año Nuevo yazidí. Al alba, las mujeres acuden al cementerio más próximo con cazuelas de comida, huevos pintados con los colores del arcoíris, flores y retratos de sus muertos. Se pasean entre las tumbas con palabras y cantos de duelo. Después, extienden manteles sobre el suelo y celebran un banquete con la ofrenda. A partir de ese momento, el día se llena de alegría.
El pueblo yazidí es uno de los más antiguos de Mesopotamia. Su religión hunde sus raíces en el cristianismo, el judaísmo, el sufismo y el zoroastrismo.… Seguir leyendo »
The word genocide should never be invoked too readily. For most the term will be forever associated with the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps and the deliberate effort to exterminate Jews. The horrors were so unspeakable that the language to describe that carefully orchestrated attempt at annihilation has to remain undiluted.
Genocide has the specific legal meaning of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. The alarming truth is that while genocidal violence has been perpetrated around the world since the word entered the legal lexicon in 1948, powerful states have resisted the use of this terminology, refusing to acknowledge genocide as genocide.… Seguir leyendo »
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday what already seems obvious: ISIS is committing genocide against the Yazidis and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS atrocities surely deserve every form of condemnation the international community can muster. So what took so long? After all, Congress was quicker to act, voting unanimously to label ISIS atrocities as genocide in a nonbinding resolution earlier this week. But Congress has greater freedom of action here: A congressional resolution has persuasive moral force but does not trigger an obligation to act. A statement by the president or his secretary of state, on the other hand, is a different story, explaining the additional caution and deliberation many have criticized.… Seguir leyendo »
It's not often these days that Americans can feel proud of what Congress has done. It's even less common to see Republicans and Democrats working together for a meaningful and important purpose.
Rub your eyes and look again, because on Monday afternoon the United States House of Representatives did something that all Americans, and the entire world, should support: It unanimously approved a resolution pinning the label of "genocide" on the atrocities being committed by the Islamic State or ISIS and other groups targeting Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities.
The vote on Capitol Hill registered complete unanimity -- a stunning 393 to 0.… Seguir leyendo »
Casi podría decirse que la crueldad está ya en el principio. Es decir: como por encima de los orígenes de la humanidad, en ese tiempo anterior al que se refieren la mayor parte de las creencias religiosas: dioses que devoran a sus hijos, o que destruyen ciudades por la conducta lasciva de sus habitantes, o que castigan a toda la especie humana porque alguien se comió una manzana. De ahí que la imagen que tenemos de las antiguas civilizaciones esté indefectiblemente teñida asimismo de crueldad: sus guerras, sus conquistas, la propia vida cotidiana. Una imagen siempre vinculada, a modo de inevitable contrapartida, a la expansión y el esplendor de absolutamente todos los imperios.… Seguir leyendo »
In the wake of Peter Kassig's beheading, we have republished this piece explaining why Isil carry out their atrocities
As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see this as an unique outcrop of Islamic fundamentalism. Yet after overrunning a Bosnian town on 11th July 1995, Bosnian Serb – ostensibly Christian – forces, cold-bloodedly massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. Hutu genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda, Khmer Rouge mass-murder of Cambodian city-dwellers, Nazi genocide of Jews, Gypsies and the disabled…. the list of savagery is as long as it is profoundly depressing.… Seguir leyendo »
"I was hiding behind a water tank in the front yard and saw them killing my father and brother and [taking] away my mother and sister. I don't know anything about them since," says Dunya, a 14-year-old Yazidi girl.
"They put us in trucks and drove us to a big building, before transferring us to a hall across the road," explains Solav, 19 and also Yazidi. "Then their seniors came and started condemning our religion and asking us to convert to Islam ... They separated me along with other young ones and ordered us to stay there while taking away the elderly women.… Seguir leyendo »
"Mr. Speaker, We are being slaughtered, we are being exterminated," cried out Vian Dakhil in a devastating appeal to the Iraqi parliament that deserves the attention of the entire world.
Everyone should watch.
The Iraqi legislator, a member of the country's Yazidi minority, collapsed at the end of her heartbreaking plea, imploring her country to stop the genocide of her people. "In the name of humanity," she said, "Save us! Save us!"
The Yazidis are caught in the brutal march of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the extremist Jihadi organization. It is also known as the Islamic State, and has anointed itself the Caliphate and its leader the ruler of all the world's Muslims.… Seguir leyendo »
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