Two more missing Yezidi children found in Syrian camp
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An institution in a local administration in north Syria tasked with helping women and children from the Yezidi (Ezidi) religious minority found and rescued from the Islamic State announced on Wednesday that two more Ezidi children were identified in a camp.
The House of Ezidi in Amude said that they have received the two minors in coordination with the management of the al-Hol camp, which now hosts over 73,000 people.
“They have provided them with all the needed requirements” including medical treatment, the group said in a statement.
The two children were listed as 13-year-old Khokhi Hassan Dakhil and 11-year-old Mufeed Kassem Elias. Both were reported to have been liberated in late March by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the campaign to take control of the group’s last territory in the town of Baghouz.
In April, the SDF handed over 25 Ezidis to the office. So far, over 300 have been rescued, but it's expected there are still more children living in the al-Hol camp who have been previously brainwashed by Islamic State members.
Baba Cawish, a high ranking priest at the holiest Yezidi site of Lalesh located in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province, recently visited the camp in an attempt to find more children.
Also on Wednesday, Co-founder and Executive Director of Yazda Organization Murad Ismael tweeted, “In a historic move, the Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council issues a statement to welcome all survivors, including women and their children born out of rape. We now hope to retrieve hundreds of women and their children from Syria.”
The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Iraq’s Ezidi-majority city of Sinjar (Shingal) in August 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the Ezidi community and the killing of thousands, now recognized by the United Nations as an act of genocide.
Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries or Western states.
Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.
As of now, about 3,400 Ezidis have been rescued from an estimated total of 6,417 kidnapped or otherwise missing, according to the Kurdistan Region’s office in charge of their rescue and repatriation.
Ezidi Foundation head Ziad Rostam earlier told AFP that they believe that Ezidis have been sold to Syrian people in Idlib, which is currently in the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group formerly known as al-Nusra Front.
Nobel laureate and former Islamic State captive Nadia Murad on Tuesday called on the international community during the UN Security Council meeting on sexual violence to do more to punish the perpetrators, as reported by VOA.
“We come to the UN, we deliver statements, but no practical steps are taken that include reconstruction or bringing the perpetrators to justice, or returning victims and displaced to their homes,” she said. “We need serious steps on the ground and not just slogans.”
“They used Yazidi women as a weapon of war, hence, they need to be tried before a special court so that they will be tried for the crimes they committed,” Murad told Security Council members.
The SDF and the local Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria have also called for the establishment of an international court to prosecute Islamic State members.
Murad continued, “Bringing elements of ISIS to justice in the framework of an international tribunal that tries them for crimes of genocide and sexual violence against women, would send messages to others and prevent such crimes in the future.”
Editing by John J. Catherine