HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The Yazidi (Ezidi) Supreme Spiritual Council has retracted an earlier statement where it said it would welcome back children born to Yazidi women due to rape by Islamic State members.
According to the Yazidi faith’s strict devotion that members of the religious minority must marry within their community to preserve their religion, many rescued Yazidi women have been forced to decide whether to abandon their children or remain in exile with them.
In what was considered a breakthrough move on Wednesday, senior Yazidi leaders in the disputed town of Sinjar (Shingal) said they would make an exception to the rule. However, the spiritual council revoked its first statement and re-issued another one on Saturday where it clarified that it would not accept children born of rape.
Murad Ismael, the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Yazidi rights group Yazda Organization, believed the retraction was due to pressure from political parties and groups.
“The magnitude of ISIS crimes makes it extremely difficult for many people to accept raising children linked to ISIS,” he said in a tweet on Saturday.
Ismael noted that abandoning these women and their children is not the right move and suggested these women and children be relocated to a country which will provide safety for them.
In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, after Massoud Barzani’s KDP peshmerga forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi civilians to IS killing and genocide.
Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered, with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child soldiers.
It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.
Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group.
Some 600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany.
There are almost 1.5 million Yazidis worldwide.
Read more about: The Yazidis
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | kurdistan24.net
Related posts:
Business with ISIS – Updated
Cultural and Physical Genocide: The Kurdish Case in Turkey
UK formally acknowledges Yazidi genocide by Islamic State
Yazidis in Iraq anxiously await Islamic State-abducted relatives
HRW report reveals suffering of Kurdish Yazidi women and children
German parliament recognises Islamic State killing of Yazidis as ‘genocide’
Six Yazidis kidnapped by Islamic State reunite with families in Iraqi Kurdistan
Yazidi teen says she can’t go home after Islamic State enslavement
