As the bearers of an ancient faith and culture living in the Middle East, within the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the former Soviet Union, the Yazidis are a people who have been subject to heavy persecutions and the target of ethnic and religious attacks.
Yazidis have been subject to many massacres in the history; they have faced 72 massacres till 2014 and they define the ISIS’s (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) attacks and massacres against them as “the 73rd massacre”.
Thousands of Yazidis had to leave Ezidxan (the lands of the Yazidis) after ISIS attacks to Şengal Mountains situated on the west of Mosul in early August in 2014. They did not have to leave only their homes and homelands behind but also their relatives who had been forcibly abducted by the ISIS.
ISIS abducted thousands of people including women, men and children and killed the myriads of people in the region where 550 thousand of Yazidis had been living before the ISIS invasion of Şengal/Sinjar and its surroundings. The ISIS sold the abducted Yazidis, especially the girls and women in bazaars as the “spoil of war”. Due to ISIS attacks, thousands of people had to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Syria, Turkey and European countries.
In February 2016, first the European Parliament recognised the ISIS attacks to Yazidis as genocide. In the decision taken by the parliament it was stated that “The so-called Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities.”
UN Human Rights Committee also stated in its report published in June 2016 that the ISIS has committed “the crime of genocide” against Yazidis and other minorities and thus recognised and declared the ISIS attacks taking place in 2014 as genocide.
Around 20 countries, including USA, İreland, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Armenia, UK, Portugal have so far recognised the Yazidi genocide.
Despite the fact that 10 years has passed since then and around 150 thousand people have repatriated to Şengal/Sinjar and the surrounding area, there are still hundreds of thousands of Yazidis who live in harsh conditions in camps, far from their homeland.
According to the recent data shared by the Yazidi Rescue Office, 6417 Yazidis were kidnapped by ISIS in 2014; 3548 of whom were women, 2869 of whom were men. According to the same data, 3562 people who had been kidnapped were rescued since the defeat of ISIS in 2019. However, around 2600 people are still missing.
In the Şengal genocide, as in Bosnia and Rwanda, crimes such as rape, forced sexual slavery and forced marriage were committed in a planned and systematic manner. It is also known that in Şengal and the surrounding area there are more than 85 identified mass graves of the Yazidis killed by the ISIS and that 15 of these mass graves have been opened and hundreds of bodies exhumed.
As the Human Rights Association, we once again respectfully commemorate those who lost their lives in the genocidal attack against the Yazidis.
There is no doubt that the recognition and announcement of the ISIS attacks against Yazidis in 2014 as genocide, by the European Parliament in February 2016 and UN Human Rights Committee in June 2016, has been an important development. We therefore call on all countries, especially Turkey, which have not recognised the Yazidi Genocide yet, to recognise the ISIS attack on the Yazidis as genocide. We also demand for the establishment of International Criminal Court under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the proceedings be held.
We also invite all states and international organisations, the United Nations in particular, to respect the right to self-determination, the right to resist genocide and the right to exist of the Yazidi people.
Human Rights Association