Genocide still haunts Iraq's Yazidis
Four years after the genocide against them, Yazidis mark its anniversary without a noticeable improvement in their situation.
DAHUK, Iraq — Statistics regrettably point to the tragedy the Yazidi religious minority has been enduring, four years after it experienced genocide.
Khairi Bozani, director of Yazidi affairs at the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Ministry of Endowments, told Al-Monitor, “Around 360,000 out of 550,000 Yazidis in Iraq were displaced. During the first few days that followed the Islamic State (IS) invasion, 1,293 were killed. The genocide left behind 2,745 orphans. IS kidnapped 6,417 Yazidis, 3,548 of whom were women and 2,869 were men.”
He said, “After Sinjar was liberated, we counted 69 mass graves, as well as dozens of individual burial sites. We also found out that IS bombed 68 religious shrines.”
However, Bozani said the most serious issue was that all these incidents forced around 100,000 Yazidis to leave Iraq for good, which further diminishes the demographic weight of this minority.
