Syria’s Hasakah residents condemn genocide of Yezidis by ISIS
HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – On Tuesday, dozens of residents of the city of Hasakah, northeast Syria, denounced the ethnic genocide carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS) against the Yezidis of Shingal (Sinjar) in August 2014.
This came in a march organized by the Yezidi House in the Jazira region, in the village of Barzan, 10 km north of Hasakah, where the demonstrators carried pictures of the victims of the massacres in Shingal (Sinjar).
The demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing the practices of ISIS against the Yezidis and the countries that support it, as well as the countries that are still silent about the massacres.
82 mass graves were found in Shingal (Sinjar) district alone, in addition to dozens of sites containing individual graves of victims killed at the hands of ISIS. Also, 68 religious shrines were destroyed, according to Office for the Rescue of Yezidi Kidnapped.
“The aim of the massacres was to exterminate the Yezidis and empty Shingal of its original inhabitants,” said Farouq Tozo, the co-chair of the Yezidi House in the Jazira region.
“Not only the Yezidis participated in the march, but a group of residents from various communities of the region participated in it as well,” he told North Press.
August 3 marks the 7th anniversary of the ISIS attack on Shingal area, killing and kidnapping thousands of Yezidis in one of the most heinous crimes of the twenty-first century.
The Yezidi House is an umbrella organization of Yezidi organizations in northeast Syria which aims at documenting Yezidi culture and customs, in addition to assisting in returning the prisoners and the kidnapped to their families in Sinjar in coordination with the official authorities of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
According to a new statistic published by the Office for the Rescue of Yezidi Kidnapped, based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the number of displaced Yezidis at the hand of ISIS reached about 360,000, of whom 150,000 people returned to Shingal.
The office documented the kidnapping of 6,417 Yezidis in the events of August 2014, the fate of 2,763 of them is still unknown.
Tozo called on the international community and international human rights organizations to recognize the Autonomous Administration and its institutions in Shingal so that such massacres will not happen again against the Yezidis.