Persecution of Yazidis by ISIL

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Yazidi persecution by ISIL
Persecution of Yazidis by the Islamic State.jpg
Images from top, left and right:
Yazidi refugees receiving support from the International Rescue Committee. A member of the U.S. Mt. Sinjar Assessment Team being greeted by locals near Sinjar, Iraq. Bundles of water inside of a C-17 Globemaster III before a humanitarian airdrop by the United States Air Force.
Location Sinjar, Iraq
Target Yazidi people
Attack type
 Genocidal Massacre
Deaths 5,000+ Yazidis killed (UN)[1]
Non-fatal injuries
 5,000–7,000 Yazidi women abducted[1]
Assailants  Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Defenders

 Iraqi Kurdistan

 United States
Motive Religious persecution, human trafficking, and forced conversions to Islam.[2]

Persecution of Yazidis by ISIL refers to the genocidal[3][4] persecution of the Yazidi people of Iraq, leading to their exile, the abduction of Yazidi women, and massacres of at least 5,000 Yazidi civilians,[5] during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign"[6] being carried out in Northern Iraq by the militant organization the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), starting in 2014.

ISIL's persecution of the Yazidi gained international attention, and directly led to the American-led intervention in Iraq (2014–present) which started with United States airstrikes against ISIL. Additionally, the US, UK, and Australia made emergency airdrops to Yazidis who had fled to a mountain range (see Sinjar massacre, § Refugee crisis in the Sinjar Mountains), and provided weapons to the Kurdish Peshmerga defending them. ISIL's actions against the Yazidi population resulted in nearly 200,000 refugees and several thousand killed and kidnapped.

Background[edit]

The Yazidis are monotheists who believe in a benevolent peacock angel (Melek Taus) and whose ancient gnostic faith has elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other extremists tend to view the peacock angel as the malevolent archangel Lucifer or Satan and label the Yazidis as 'devil worshippers'.[7][8]

Under Islamic Law as observed by ISIL, Yazidis are officially given the choice to convert to Sunni Islam or die. They are not eligible for the jizya tax taken from "People of the Book" by ISIL that would allow them to continue observing their religion.[9]

Previous targeting of Yazidis (by Sunnis)[edit]

Ottoman era[edit]

Post 2003 Iraq invasion era[edit]

Main articles: 2007 Yazidi communities bombings and April 2007 Mosul massacre

Violence outbreak[edit]

Main articles: Northern Iraq offensive (August 2014) and Sinjar massacre

On 3 August 2014, ISIL militants attacked and took over Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled town that was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis,[13] and the surrounding area.

Yazidis,[14] and internet postings of ISIL,[15] have reported summary executions that day by ISIL militants, leading to 200,000 civilians fleeing Sinjar, of whom around 50,000 Yazidis escaping to the nearby Sinjar Mountains. They were trapped on Mount Sinjar, facing starvation and dehydration.[15][16][17]

On 4 August 2014, Prince Tahseen Said, Emir of the Yazidi, issued a plea to world leaders calling for assistance on behalf of the Yazidi facing attack from ISIL.[18]

Massacres, sexual slavery, forced exile[edit]

Sinjar massacre[edit]

Main article: Sinjar massacre
See also: Northern Iraq offensive (August 2014)

On 3 August, ISIL chased ten Yazidi families fleeing the al-Qahtaniya area, killing the men and abducting women and children.[19] According to reports from surviving Yazidi, between 3 and 6 August, more than 50 Yazidi were killed near Dhola village, 100 in Khana Sor village, 250–300 in Hardan area, more than 200 on the road between Adnaniya and Jazeera, dozens near al-Shimal village, and on the road from Matu village to Jabal Sinjar. Between 70 and 90 Yazidi men were lined-up and shot while taking a rest in Qiniyeh village.[20]

On 4 August, ISIL fighters attacked Jabal Sinjar, killed 30 Yazidi men; 60 more Yazidi men were killed in the village of Hardan. On the same day, Yazidi community leaders stated that at least 200 Yazidis had been killed in Sinjar (see Sinjar massacre), and 60–70 near Ramadi Jabal.[19]

On 10 August 2014, according to statements by the Iraqi government and others, ISIL militants buried alive an undefined number of Yazidi women and children in northern Iraq in an attack that killed 500 people, in what has been described as genocide.[21]

Those who escaped across the Tigris River into Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria on 10 August gave accounts of how they had seen individuals also attempting to flee who later died.[13][22][23]

Khocho massacre[edit]

Main article: Khocho massacre

On 15 August, in the Yazidi village of Khocho, south of Sinjar, after the whole population had received the jihadist ultimatum to convert or be killed, over 80 men were killed.[24][25] A witness recounted that the villagers were first converted under duress,[26] but when the village elder refused to convert, all of the men were taken in trucks under the pretext of being led to Sinjar, and gunned down along the way.[27] According to reports from survivors interviewed by OHCHR, on 15 August, the entire male population of the Yazidi village of Khocho, up to 400 men, were rounded up and shot by ISIL, and up to 1,000 women and children were abducted.

Between 24 and 25 August, 14 elderly Yazidi men were executed by ISIL in Sheikh Mand Shrine near Jidala, and the Yazidi shrine was blown up.[28] On 1 September, the Yazidi villages of Kotan, Hareko and Kharag Shafrsky were set afire by ISIL, and on 9 September, Peshmerga fighters discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of 14 executed civilians, presumably Yazidis.[28]

According to an OHRCR/UNAMI report on 26 September, by the end of August, 1,600–1,800 or more Yazidis who had been murdered, executed, or died from starvation.[29] In early October, Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago, estimated between 3,000–5,000 Yazidi men had been killed by ISIS.[1]

In October 2014, a UN report revealed that ISIL had massacred 5,000 Yazidi men in northern Iraq in August 2014.[5]

In May 2015, the Yazidi Progress Party released a statement in which they said that 300 Yazidi captives were killed on 1 May by ISIL in the Tal Afar, Iraq.[30]

Abduction of women; sexual slavery[edit]

Main article: Sexual Violence in the Iraqi Insurgency
See also: Forced marriage, Islamic views on slavery, Ma malakat aymanukum, Slavery in 21st-century Islamism and Wartime sexual violence

On 3 August, ISIL abducted women and children from the al-Qahtaniya area, and 450–500 abducted Yazidi women and girls were taken to Tal Afar; hundreds more to Si Basha Khidri and then Ba’aj.[28]

On 4 August, ISIL fighters attacked Jabal Sinjar and abducted a number of women in the Yazidi village of Hardan, wives and daughters were abducted; other Yazidi women were abducted in other villages in the area.[28] On 6 August, ISIL kidnapped 400 Yazidi women in Sinjar to sell them as sex slaves.[31] According to reports from surviving Yazidi, between 3 and 6 August, 500 Yazidi women and children were abducted from Ba'aj and more than 200 from Tal Banat.[20] According to a statement by the Iraqi government on 10 August 2014, hundreds of women were taken as slaves in northern Iraq.[2] On 15 August, in the Yazidi village of Kojo, south of Sinjar, over 100 women were abducted,[25] though according to some reports from survivors, up to 1,000 women and children of the Yazidi village of Khocho were abducted.[20] According to an OHRCR/UNAMI report on 26 September, by the end of August up to 2,500 Yazidis, mostly women and children, had been abducted.[28] In early October, Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago, compiled a list of names of 4,800 Yazidi women and children who had been captured (estimating the total number of abducted people to be possibly up to 7,000).[1]

The abducted Yazidi women were sold into slave markets with ISIL "using rape as a weapon of war" according to CNN, with the group having gynaecologists ready to examine the captives. Yazidi women were physically observed, including examinations to see if they were "virgins" or if they were pregnant. Women who were found to be pregnant were taken by the ISIL gynaecologists and forced abortions were performed on them.[32]

Haleh Esfandiari from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars highlighted the abuse of local women by ISIL militants after they have captured an area. "They usually take the older women to a makeshift slave market and try to sell them. The younger girls ... are raped or married off to fighters", she said, adding, "It's based on temporary marriages, and once these fighters have had sex with these young girls, they just pass them on to other fighters."[33]

Speaking of Yazidi women captured by ISIS, Nazand Begikhani said in October, "These women have been treated like cattle... They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They've been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags."[34] Yazidi girls in Iraq allegedly raped by ISIL fighters have committed suicide by jumping to their death from Mount Sinjar, as described in a witness statement.[35]

A United Nations report issued on 2 October 2014, based on 500 interviews with witnesses, said that ISIL took 450–500 women and girls to Iraq's Nineveh region in August where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves".[36] Also in October 2014, a UN report revealed that ISIL had detained 5–7,000 Yazidi women as slaves or forced brides in northern Iraq in August 2014.[1]

In early November 2014, a horrifying "price list" for Yazidi and Christian females surfaced online. While human rights NGO Defend International immediately verified the document's authenticity,[37] UN official Zainab Bangura didn't confirm it to be genuine before August 2015.[38]

In November 2014 The New York Times reported on the accounts given by five who escaped ISIL of their captivity and abuse.[39]

In its digital magazine Dabiq, ISIL explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women.[40][41]

According to The Wall Street Journal, ISIL appeals to apocalyptic beliefs and claims "justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world".[42] In late 2014, ISIL released a pamphlet on the treatment of female slaves.[43][44][45][46][47][48] The New York Times said in August 2015 that "[t]he systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution."[49]

Flight into Sinjar Mountains[edit]

See also: Sinjar massacre § Refugee crisis in the Sinjar Mountains

The ISIL offensive in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq, 3–4 August, caused 30,000–50,000 Yazidis to flee into the Sinjar Mountains (Jabal Sinjar) fearing they would be killed by ISIL. They had been threatened with death if they refused conversion to Islam. A UN representative said that "a humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar".[50]

On 3 and 4 August, 14 or more Yazidi children and some elderly or people with disabilities died of hunger, dehydratation, and heat on Sinjar Mountains.[51] By 6 August, according to reports from survivors, 200 Yazidi children while fleeing to Jabal Sinjar had died from thirst, starvation, heat and dehydratation.[19]

Fifty thousand Yazidis, besieged by ISIL on Mount Sinjar, were able to escape, thanks to a multinational rescue operation which involved dropping of supplies on the mountains and evacuation of refugees by helicopters, and to a Peshmerga attack that broke ISIL siege on the mountains. During the rescue operation, on 12 August, an overloaded Iraqi Air Force helicopter crashed on Mount Sinjar, killing Iraqi Air Force Major General Majid Ahmed Saadi (the pilot) and injuring 20 people.[52][53]

By 20 October, 2,000 Yazidis, mainly volunteer fighters, who had remained behind to protect the villages, but also civilians (700 families who had not yet escaped), were reported as still in the Sinjar area, and were forced by ISIL to abandon the last villages in their control, Dhoula and Bork, and retreat to the Sinjar Mountains.[54]

Forced conversion to Islam[edit]

In an article by The Washington Post, it is stated that there is an estimated 7,000 Yazidis who had been forced to convert to "the Islamic State group’s harsh interpretation of Islam".[55]

Sunni collaboration[edit]

In several villages, local Sunnis were reported to have sided with ISIL, betraying Yazidis for slaughter once ISIL arrived, and even possibly colluding in advance with ISIL to lie to Yazidis, to lure them into staying put until the jihadis invaded; although there was also one report of Sunnis helping Yazidis to escape.[56]

Classification as "Genocide"[edit]

The persecution of the Yazidi people has been viewed as qualifying as "genocide" by groups such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in a March 2015 report. The organization cited the numerous atrocities such as forced religious conversion and sexual slavery as being parts of an overall malicious campaign.[3][57] Multiple individual human rights activists such as Nazand Begikhani[58] and Widad Akrawi have also advocated for this view.[59] The term itself first arose in 1944 as the creation of a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin, who himself defined the term as reflecting "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."[60]

Releases of Yazidi captives[edit]

In January 2015, about 200 Yazidis were released by ISIL. Kurdish military officials believed they were released because they were a burden. On 8 April 2015, 216 Yazidis, with the majority being children and elderly, were released by ISIL after being held captive for about 8 months. Their release occurred following an offensive by US-led air assaults and pressure from Iraqi ground forces who were pushing northward and in the process of retaking Tikrit. According to General Hiwa Abdullah, a peshmerga commander in Kirkuk, those released were in poor health with signs of abuse and neglect visible.[61]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

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  2. ^ a b "Islamic State Killed 500 Yazidis, Buried Some Victims Alive". Huffington Post. 10 August 2014. Retrieved 11 August 2014. 
  3. ^ a b "UN accuses the "Islamic State" in the genocide of the Yazidis" (in Russian). BBC Russian Service/BBC. 19 March 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2015. 
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  5. ^ a b Hopkins, Steve (14 October 2014). "Full horror of the Yazidis who didn’t escape Mount Sinjar: UN confirms 5,000 men were executed and 7,000 women are now kept as sex slaves". London: The Daily Mail. Retrieved 13 March 2015. 
  6. ^ Arraf, Jane (7 August 2014). "Islamic State persecution of Yazidi minority amounts to genocide, UN says". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2014. 
  7. ^ "Why Does ISIS Consider the Yazidi 'Devil Worshippers'?". Ultra Culture. Retrieved 12 August 2014. 
  8. ^ The Devil Worshipers of the Middle East: Their Beliefs & Sacred Books Holmes Pub Group LLC (December 1993); ISBN 1-55818-231-4/ISBN 978-1-55818-231-8
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  10. ^ Evliya Çelebi, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1662), Translated by Robert Dankoff, 304 pp., SUNY Press, 1991; ISBN 0-7914-0640-7, pp. 169–171
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  20. ^ a b c OHCHR & UNAMI 2014, p. 14.
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  61. ^ Yacoub, Sameer N. (8 April 2015). "Islamic State releases over 200 Iraqi Yazidis after 8 months as captives". Toronto. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 9 April 2015. 

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

Genocide topics
Genocides
Types
Methods
Genocide denial
Issues
Notable figures
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