Hundreds of Yazidi families who left their tents and fled the camps in Duhok and Zakho due to the fear of attacks have reached Shengal. The families are welcomed by the Shengal Autonomous Administration and Asayish units.
Hundreds of Yazidi families, who were forcibly held by the KDP (the ruling party in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq) in the camps in Duhok and Zakho, started to leave the camps and flee, thinking that they were under threat from the hate speech directed against them.
Yazidis fled the camps fearing an attack against them after imams in Duhok and Zakho incited hatred in Friday sermons and KDP's local media accounts fuelled hatred on the social media.
Some of the hundreds of fleeing Yazidi families reached Shengal on Friday. It is reported that the Yazidi IDPs’ return to their hometown is still continuing.
There was an accumulation of hundreds of vehicles at the entrance of Shengal. Arriving families are welcomed by the forces of the Shengal Autonomous Administration and Êzîdxan Asayish (local security units).
Earlier today, the Autonomous Administration called on Iraq to take urgent security measures against the possibility of an attack on Yazidis in the camps.
Background: Genocide of the Yazidi in Shengal
On 3 August 2014, the Islamic State attacked the Shengal region in northern Iraq with the aim of wiping out the Yazidi community, which had already been persecuted for centuries. Through systematic massacres, rape, torture, expulsion, enslavement of girls and women and the forced recruitment of boys as child soldiers, the Yazidi experienced what they call the "Ferman" - the 74th genocide in their history. According to the UN, at least 10,000 people were killed, about half of them children. Even among the thousands who starved, died of thirst or died of their injuries while fleeing to the mountains, almost all of them were children (93 percent). ISIS forced boys as young as seven to work as child soldiers in its training camps. Girls were raped and sexually enslaved, and more than 400,000 people were driven from their homes.
According to estimates by the Yazda organization, around 2,700 Yazidi are still missing today, including around 1,300 who were children at the time of their abduction. Many of them are still systematically raped and kept and sold as slaves. Therefore, this genocide in its form also represents a femicide. The organization Nadia's Initiative assumes that 300 to 400 girls and boys under the age of 18 are still in the hands of ISIS. More than 3,500 Yazidi have been rescued, including 2,000 children.
