A shopping mall named Shengal — an exotic name to Russians — is located in the eastern part of Moscow. Shengal is the Kurdish name of the city of Sinjar, which is located in northern Iraq where Yazidis live. Most of the customers I met in the shopping center have no idea what “Shengal” means. They also are unaware that on the ground floor of the building there is a TV studio called Lalish TV, the only satellite Yazidi channel in the world.
Lalish TV was launched in April. “We are the only Yazidi channel in Russia that broadcasts in the Yazidi language [Kurmanji or Kurdish dialect] for Yazidis all over the world. We have no link with any political party or movement. We are not politicized. Our aim is to help Yazidis save their identity. We want to give them more information about Yazidi culture, language, religion and history,” a representative of Lalish TV told Al-Monitor.
Mirza Sloyan, a Yazidi Russian businessman, sponsors Lalish TV. Areas of broadcasting include Russia, Europe, Armenia, Georgia and Iraq. Some of the programs are produced in Moscow; the others are produced in studios based in Germany and France.
The estimated population of Yazidis in Russia is 40,586, according to the 2010 population census. The majority of them live in big cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Krasnodar. Some Yazidis identify themselves as Kurds or Yazidi-Kurds. For many years they have been members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) or of Iraqi political parties such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. In all of these establishments, Kurdish identity prevails over the Yazidi one.
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