(New York, N.Y.) – Tomorrow marks ten years since ISIS launched an assault on the Yazidi religious minority in the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq—the beginning of a sustained campaign of oppression and violence carried out by ISIS against the Yazidi community.
During the initial attacks, approximately 5,000 Yazidis were killed, many through mass executions, and nearly 7,000 Yazidi women and children were kidnapped and enslaved throughout ISIS's so-called caliphate. As ISIS advanced, 400,000 Yazidis were forced to flee to Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. An estimated 55,000 Yazidis fled to the nearby Sinjar Mountains, where many died from dehydration and starvation.
To commemorate this anniversary, CEP has launched a new resource providing key information on the genocide, including details of CEP’s partnership with Nobody’s Listening—an award-winning immersive exhibition and virtual reality (VR) experience dedicated to educating people about the Yazidi genocide.
Liam Duffy, strategic adviser at the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), commented on the anniversary:
“Ten years have passed since the ISIS onslaught against the Yazidi population of Sinjar, Iraq, and one of the worst atrocities of modern times has already all but faded from our collective consciousness.
Some 6,000 Europeans are thought to have joined ISIS, many of them after the Yazidi genocide was well documented and publicised—mainly by ISIS themselves. Despite this, and despite eyewitness and survivor accounts pointing to the involvement of Western recruits in the most unspeakable crimes committed against innocent women and children, there have been precious few charges and fewer still convictions.
Western governments—above all those that recognise August 3rd as a genocide—have both a moral and legal responsibility to investigate their citizens for any possible role in the torment and torture of Yazidis taken captive by ISIS. Yazidis can no longer wait and see their calls for justice and accountability fall on deaf ears."
To read CEP’s Yazidi Genocide resource, please click here.
To read CEP’s report on Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide, please click here.