Iraqi Yazidis Protest in Commemoration of ISIS’ Crimes in Sinjar
(AWP) - Yazidis in the Iraqi town of Sinjar held a march where they hung up photographs of their victims killed at the hands of militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) during their control of the Nineveh Governorate and the war to liberate Mosul in the years 2016 and 2017.
Participants called on the Iraqi government to honour its earlier commitments towards the Yazidi community, which include a reconstruction plan and programmes to improve their living conditions and service facilities.
Sinjar residents say that the situation in the district is tragic, adding that they have been left with nothing but a huge legacy from the battle to rid the nearby city of Mosul of ISIS remnants.
“The situation is still tragic. We have not and will not leave after the genocide that occurred on August 3rd, 2014, when ISIS was a calamity on all Iraqis and was more ferocious and crueller. It exterminated the Yazidis and Sinjaris who migrated and were taken captive, killed and martyred. But in reality, it was a genocide,” Mohammed Khalil Qassem, a member of parliament and former mayor of Sinjar, said.
“Today, what Sinjar district is going through is a political, geographical, service, and economic genocide, and a rights genocide. The Iraqi government has issued a huge number of decisions and agreements regarding Sinjar, but they remained ink on paper. For example, where is the Sinjar agreement that was included in the government programme of Mr. al-Sudani (Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani), and what did Mr. Al-Sudani do regarding the Sinjar agreement that included five essential paragraphs for Sinjar?” he added.
Qassem said that they will take their cause to the Iraqi and international judiciaries.
“We will resort to the Iraqi judiciary, and we have full confidence in it. We will resort to international courts. We have put pressure on countries, and you will soon witness international pressure for Sinjar and the Yazidis. The Iraqi government must implement a humanitarian and international programme for the benefit of Iraq,” he continued.
Maysar Khalaf is a Yazidi Iraqi who took part in the demonstration in Sinjar. He had lost several family members who were killed at the hands of ISIS militants.
According to Khalaf, participating in such events is an inevitable duty to restore rights and remember the victims.
“When the date of 03-08-2014 came, ISIS gangs killed many Yazidis here, and carried out executions in all of Sinjar district, especially Adnaniya district, where the people of the district resisted ISIS with a desperate resistance. ISIS militants killed many people, and it became our duty, we the families of the victims, to carry out this stand for all Yazidis without exception,” Khalaf said.
Iraqis will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the ISIS massacres against hundreds of thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar district, Nineveh Governorate, on August 3rd.