On the 10th anniversary of the Yezidi genocide by ISIS, survivors are still struggling to get the international community to identify and punish the Kurdish collaborators who helped pave the path for slaughter.
In August 2014, the terror group ISIS slaughtered thousands of men and enslaved thousands of women and children from the Yezidi religious minority in the Sinjar region of Iraq.
Ten years later, Yezidis, who survived their genocide by ISIS and fled to Europe as refugees, established a protest camp in front of the German parliament in Berlin to tell the truth about what happened.
Yezidi activists speaking with The Cradle say they want the world to know that politicians and military leaders of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), led by Masoud Barzani and his family, partnered with ISIS in planning and executing the genocide.
“Barzani and the Kurds are the most responsible for what happened to us,” Farhad Shamo Roto, a survivor of the genocide, tells The Cradle. Farhad is among several Yezidi activists who helped establish the Voice of Yezidis for the Truth of Genocide (VETO-G) protest camp in Berlin.
Betrayal
In the weeks leading up to the ISIS massacre in 2014, the Peshmerga – Kurdish security forces under Barzani’s control – publicly claimed they would protect Sinjar until their “last drop of blood.” But Yezidis did not then know Barzani had agreed with ISIS to allow the terror group to carry out the genocide.
Under orders from Barzani, the Peshmerga disarmed Yezidis and prevented them from fleeing Sinjar, leaving them defenseless, open targets for the terror to follow. As Farhad and others in the encampment and inside Iraq have repeatedly confirmed to The Cradle:
Barzani’s Peshmerga left Sinjar without notice, allowing ISIS to attack, after they had used all means to convince us that they would protect Sinjar through their official media and their leaders.
Farhad escaped the ISIS massacre with his family at the age of 17. After three years of living in a tent in an internally displaced person (IDP) camp in the IKR, he became a refugee in France. He is now completing a PhD on the Yezidi genocide at the prestigious Centre d’Etudes Diplomatiques et Strategiques in Paris.
Silencing the truth
Like most Yezidis, Farhad initially remained silent about the Kurdish responsibility for the genocide. While living in the IDP camp, he feared retaliation from Barzani’s secret police, the Asayish.
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