23. UN on the genocide of Yezidis:

GENEVA. For the first time, the terrorist group Islamic State crimes against ethnic group yazidier have been examined in detail by the UN Commission of Inquiry for Syria. It is also the first time that the UN classifies IS crimes as genocide.

- There is no doubt that this is genocide. It is even worse than Srebrenica and Rwanda. In Srebrenica and Rwanda, it was about killing for a short time. This is systematically killing, torturing and sexual slavery on a massive scale for several years. And this happens in 2016, says the investigator Carla del Ponte to SvD.

It is unimaginable atrocities documented in the report, based on detailed interviews with 45 survivors, religious leaders, smugglers, lawyers and medical personnel.

IS trying to exterminate the whole community of 400 000 people by murder, sexual slavery, torture and "obliterating their identity," according to the UN describing the brutality as both  war crimes and genocide.

- In addition, over 3200 yezidi women and girls are still captives of the IS. They are kept as sex slaves, while boys are abducted to be indoctrinated and used in combat. Thousands yezidi men and boys disappeared without a trace. There is an ongoing yezidi genocide, warns the investigators.

The report makes you think about the Holocaust with the descriptions of systematic abuse and killing, since IS captured the town of Sinjar in northwest Iraq, August 3, 2014.

To begin with, tens of thousands yazidier were held prisoners in 50 degree heat without food and water on Mount Sinjar when the IS-warriors arrived. Hundreds were killed and almost all the villages on the mountain was emptied within 72 hours.

Men were taken away in buses and disappeared without a trace while women were driven to camps inside the IS-controlled areas in Syria. Men and boys who refused to convert to Islam, had their throats cut or a bullet in the head, while the family was forced to watch.

Those who converted were prisoners and forced to do slave work digging ditches, tend cattle or scrub the streets and forced to grow beards and pray regularly.
 

"We are yezidis, help help help" is written on the girl´s placard, before Pope Franciscus arrival of Moria refugee camps on Lesbos in April.

Photo: Filippo Monteforte / AP

Really terrible is the detailed description of the jihadists slave markets and the treatment of yezidi women. Thousands of women and girls have since 2014 been driven like cattle between overcrowded slave camps. They have been given food with insects in and forced to drink water from toilets, according to the report.

- The women are seen as possessions of IS and called openly for Sabaya - slaves. On the slave markets, they have been sold as sex slaves to the highest paying. Last year IS also began to sell sex slaves at online auctions where details about age, marital status and the price were stated. There is even a central committee organizing slave markets, according to investigators.

    The youngest girls sold were between seven and nine years, says survivors.

- Some of the girls have been sold up to 15 times, often to prices between 200 and 1500 dollars. Many women have torn their faces and ensured that they bleed to prevent becoming bought. Some have committed suicide in the camps of Tel Afar, Mosul and Raqqah. They have committed suicide by cutting her wrists or cut off their necks, others have hung themselves in their headscarves, according to the report.


- In the market we had to take off our headscarves to show the hair and sometimes the warriors demanded that we opened our mouths so they could inspect our teeth, says a girl in the report.

Many foreign fighters have also bought and sold the yezidi women in the markets. Among nationalities are men from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Belgium and Australia, according to investigators. Sexual violence has been widespread.

The majority of women enslaved and interviewed in the report have been raped daily by their "owners", sometimes handcuffed or tied to beds. In many cases their children had been taken away and killed.

- IS and its fighters have clearly demonstrated that the intention is to destroy the Yezidis as an ethnic group. They have been subjected to incomprehensible brutality. We urge the UN Security Council immediately refer the situation to the International Criminal Court, requires UN investigators.

Source: Translated from an article by Svenska Dagbladet.

www.svd.se/fn-ofattbar-brutalitet-och-folkmord-pa-yazidier/om/kriget-i-syrien

Yezidis exposed people

Yezidis are a religious group in Iraq who mainly lives in the northern part of the country. There are both kurdish and Arabic speaking yezidis. They are persecuted by extreme islamists - and especially by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS) - who regard them as apostates from the true faith, and many have been forced to convert to Islam.

No one knows how many yazidier are found in Iraq, their number is estimated to be anywhere from 70,000 to 500 000. The Minority Rights Group International has already before IS expansion warned that the Yezidis are in danger of extinction in silence.

Yazidismen is a pre-Islamic religion with roots in ancient Persia, and has elements of both Islam and Christianity.
Source: Country Guide, BBC (TT)