Yazidi channel Çira TV banned in Iraqi Kurdistan, September 2019. Photo: Screenshot/Çira TV
DUHOK, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The Yazidi TV channel Çira TV is banned in Iraqi Kurdistan region and is not allowed to report from the holy sites Lalesh Nûranî and Shekhan. The governorship of Duhok has sent the station a ban without explanation, ANF new agency reported.
For nearly two months, the Yazidi channel Çira TV has been trying unsuccessfully with the government of Iraqi Kurdistan region for the approval of its work in the region. Today a prohibition order of the governorship of Duhok was sent to the TV station. Without explanation, it was stated that there was a ban on the TV in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Çira TV told that the TV station staff had already been threatened with arrests before the ban came. They said the ban violated the freedom of the press and was a sign of “disrespect for the Yazidi society”, remarking that prohibition of a TV channel of the Yazidi community was in conflict with the national values ??of Kurdistan.
Çira TV is the world’s first TV station of the Yazidi community. It is broadcast via SAT in HD and can also be viewed on the internet via live stream. Çira in Kurdish (Kurmancî) means light, candle or lamp.
Since the beginning of 2019, the station has had a German-language format called ÇIRA FOKUS, which is moderated on Thursdays by Yilmaz Pê?kevin Kaba and addresses current political and cultural topics.
Most of the Yazidi people lost faith in the ruling Barzani family when the KDP Peshmerga forces failed to protect them from Islamic State in 2014 which lead to the genocide of the Yazidis in Sinjar district in northwest Iraq.
Many Yazidis, critics, Kurdish politicians and observers blame ex-Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani, the commander in-chief of the Peshmerga, for the Yazidi massacre.
In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, after Barzani’s militia forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi civilians to IS killing and genocide.
Thousands of Yazidi families fled to Mount Sinjar, where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis as well as rape and captivity of thousands of women.
Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered, with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child soldiers.
It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.
Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing, according to official statistics.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group.
Some 600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. There are almost 1.5 million Yazidis worldwide.
Read more about Freedom of Expression, Human Rights and Journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan
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