Saturday marked exactly 10 years since Islamic State (IS) entered Iraq’s Sinjar province, displacing, killing and enslaving hundreds of thousands of Yazidis. On Saturday morning, crowds gathered for a ceremony to remember victims of the genocide at the “grave of the mothers”, where 111 elderly women were shot dead or buried alive after being separated from their family members.
The ceremony at the mass grave near the Yazidi genocide memorial in Solagh began at 10am, when a minute’s silence was observed across the country. Traditional Yazidi songs were sung, and poems and witness testimonies were recited on the stage.
Shiren Ibrahim Ahmed, 24, from the village of Kojo, was among the thousands assembled. “They brought us, the women, from our village, in the institute here, and our mothers and grandmothers were then shot in this field,” she told the Observer. “We heard the sounds of guns, and we haven’t heard from them since then.” On the same day, Shiren was kidnapped and enslaved by IS.
She was moved from Sinjar to Mosul and then to Syria, where she remained for four years after being sold to IS members of Moroccan and Saudi nationalities. “Tabqa, Deir al-Zour, Raqqa … I was sold in different provinces of Syria and only in 2018 I was smuggled back to Iraq,” she said. “The community paid $10,000 to have me back.” Her two sisters, now living in Dohuk, are also survivors of the IS sexual slavery campaign.
The remains of Shiren’s father and brother were exhumed from another mass grave and identified so that they could be buried in their village cemetery. Her mother’s and grandmothers’ bodies have not been handed over to the three sisters. A staggering 93 mass graves were discovered in the province, excluding individual graves.
Ten years after the genocide, only 243 out of 2,055 missing people have been identified and buried.
Dr Zeid al-Yusif, director of the Medico-Legal Directorate in Baghdad, explained why. “Most of the Yazidi killed are part of the same family, so it’s difficult to have DNA samples from them. Many are refugees abroad. After years of campaigning in Sinjar and Kurdistan, last autumn we started to collect DNA samples in Stuttgart, Germany. We reunited 600 people to get their blood samples. We will continue to do that, hopefully also in Canada and Australia.”
According to the directorate of Yazidi affairs in the ministry of endowments and religious affairs, which the UN has accredited, the Yazidi community before 2014 numbered 550,000. Approximately 360,000 were displaced during the genocide, and only 150,000 returned to their homes.
In the initial days of the genocide, 1,293 Yazidis lost their lives. The tragedy left 2,745 Yazidi children orphaned. About 100,000 Yazidis migrated and sought refuge in Europe. A total of 6,417 were abducted, including 3,548 women. Despite the horrors, 3,550 survived, including 1,026 women. The genocide also resulted in the destruction of 68 Yazidi temples.
In the ruined old city of Sinjar on the eve of the anniversary, Yazidis hung the pictures of their missing above the rubble. Some candles were lit and a few of the women fainted, remembering the pain they had endured over the last decade. As an ambulance arrived, the mass of people remained silent.
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“This anniversary passes every year and nothing has changed in reality. Until now more than 100,000 Yazidis live in the displaced camps in Kurdistan,” said Salah Hassan, spokesperson of Nadia’s Initiative, an organisation founded by the Nobel peace prize winner Nadia Murad.
Murad, who also spearheaded the creation of the genocide memorial at the request of the Yazidi people, attended Saturday’s ceremony. “Negotiations between the Iraqi and the Kurdish governments are ongoing, but we still live in tents. We are afraid of the continuation of this genocide, for the harsh reality the Yazidis live in in Iraq, and for being exiled around the world,” Hassan added.
The refugee camps in the Kurdistan region of Iraq were originally set for closure last week, but the Iraqi government said they would keep supporting them. However, the government is encouraging the displaced to voluntarily return to their original places of residence. Female survivors of the IS kidnapping can apply for reparations under the Yazidi survivors’ law, adopted by Iraq in March 2021.
“The monthly salary [800,000 Iraqi dinars] is the only applied article of the law,” said Shiren. “But what about the active [search for] the women still missing in Syria? And what about my right to education? Ten years ago I was at school, and now I haven’t yet completed my studies.” She is now a social facilitator with the Farida Global Organisation, supporting other female survivors to cope with the trauma.
“I have a positive energy when I can support women like me who endured extreme violence,” she said. “But the sad memories of this anniversary are coming back, and they remind me of my mother’s and grandmothers’ killing in this grave. During war, men are usually killed. What made me suffer the most of the whole genocide is the killing of our mothers. We didn’t deserve that.”