Lalish, Iraq: Thousands of Yazidis flocked to a shrine in northern Iraq to mark the New Year on Wednesday, in the minority’s biggest gathering since it was targeted for genocide by militants.
Wearing traditional Yazidi clothes, holding candles and paraffin lamps, they started gathering in the holy town of Lalish on Tuesday for celebrations ahead of their New Year.
The event, known by the ethno-religious minority as “Carsama Sari Sali”, is meant to commemorate the creation of the universe by the angels and celebrate nature and fertility.
But the mood was sombre among the faithful gathered in Lalish, every one of whom was affected by the violence that erupted nearly three years ago when Daesh took over their traditional homeland.
“I’m not happy, it’s not like before, because there are those who are still in the hands of Daesh,” said Zoan Msaid, a Yazidi woman from the Sinjar area who now lives in a camp for displaced people.
“We cannot forget our customs and traditions, but I just want those who are still held to come back, that’s all. We ask for nothing more.”
Yazidis are neither Arab nor Muslim, and when Daesh swept across northern Iraq in 2014, it carried out massacres against the minority which the United Nations said qualified as genocide.
Most of the several hundred thousand members of the minority live in northern Iraq, mainly around Sinjar, a large town which anti-Daesh forces have now retaken but was extensively destroyed.
Daesh militants captured Yazidi women and turned them into sex slaves to be sold and exchanged across their self-proclaimed “caliphate”. Around 3,000 of them are believed to remain in captivity.
“Of course, after three years under the domination of the militants who killed Yazidis and imposed mass slavery, nothing is like before because we are all suffering,” said Cheir Ebrahim Keshto, a professor and expert in Yazidi culture.
“We live in sorrow now and the situation in the camps is catastrophic,” he said.
Yazda, a charity supporting victims of the militants’ persecution of the Yazidis, issued a statement urging the community to continue defending its faith, a unique blend of beliefs.
“Yazda calls on our people to continue to observe their religious events to preserve the ethno-religious identity and heritage of one of the most ancient peoples,” its director Murad Esmael said.
Yazda voiced concern that even areas that were retaken from Daesh remained unsafe for Yazidis due to disputes between local forces for regional supremacy.
Tensions have recently escalated between peshmerga forces form the main party in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and forces from Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“This situation has resulted in creating the greatest danger facing the Yazidi community, which may ultimately be more dangerous than the ongoing genocide itself,” the Yazda statement said.
Nadia Murad, a prominent Yazidi human rights activist who has been campaigning worldwide to draw attention to her people’s plight, stressed in a New Year message delivered during a visit to Stanford University in California that the militants had not yet been held accountable.
“Our hearts have been broken as we still seek justice, and we haven’t found it yet,” said Murad, who last year was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and awarded the prestigious Sakharov Prize jointly with Lamiya Aji Bashar, another Yazidi woman.
