While world leaders and the media are too busy sympathizing with Hamas, jihadists of the Islamic State group (formerly known as ISIS) are wiping an entire religion off the face of the earth. The jihadists have trapped up to 40,000 Yazidi Kurds, one of Kurdistan's oldest ethno-religious communities. They were forced to flee to Mount Sinjar or face slaughter by the Islamic State, which is said to have captured 500 Yazidi women and girls as concubines and transported them to Mosul. Irbil-based Rudaw TV has reported that some Yazidis are resorting to eating leaves in a desperate effort to survive. "People walk the length of the mountain with no food and water and some have resorted to eating leaves off the trees," said Rudaw correspondent Barakat Issa, who is stuck in the mountains. In another report, Issa said that "the death toll among thousands of Yazidi civilians on Mount Sinjar is rising every minute, with dead bodies lying everywhere among the rocks. The children and elderly who have died are so many that they cannot be counted." As Yazidis were facing genocide, a Yazidi parliamentarian, Vian Dakhil, broke down in tears on Wednesday as she urged the Iraqi parliament to do something about the unfolding tragedy . "There are Yazidis who now live in Mount Sinjar. We are being slaughtered under the banner of 'La ilaha illa-llah' ['There is no god but Allah']," she said in tears. "Seventy children have died so far of thirst and suffocation. Fifty elderly people have died because of deteriorating conditions. We are being slaughtered, annihilated. An entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. "Five hundred Yazidi boys and men have been slaughtered up to now. Our women are being taken captive and sold on the slave market. A genocide campaign is taking place right now against the Yazidis. Brothers, despite all the political disagreements, we want human solidarity. I speak in the name of humanity. Save us! Save us!" The Yazidis, members of a Kurdish religious community that practices an ancient religion linked to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions, are exposed to genocide by a cruel wave of Islamization. But this is not the first genocide in their history. The Yazidis count 72 genocidal massacres in their history. Many of these took place under Ottoman rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their persecution has continued under the Turkish republic, as well. A motion filed by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party stated that out of the 80,000 Yazidis who lived in Turkey four decades ago, fewer than 400 remain today. "The Yazidis have been deprived of their housing rights in Turkey. They had to leave their country due to the persecution and pressure they faced. And after they moved to Europe, even their private registered lands were invaded, and their trees were ripped out. The Yazidi owners of those lands were threatened, and some of their villages were abandoned and became uninhabitable places," the motion said. "Yazidis are registered either as Muslims or nonbelievers in official documents and identity papers. Their faith has been neglected, their lands have been forcibly taken away from them and their main source of income, which is agriculture and husbandry, has been eradicated this way." After 72 campaigns to eliminate the Yazidis from the region, the latest -- 73rd -- attempt is unfolding before the eyes of the whole world. Their only crime is to be regarded as infidels by the Islamic State jihadists -- in other words, to have been born as they are. They are desperately waiting to be saved in the mountains, where they have been trapped. With no Iraqi forces left to protect Yazidi or Christian minorities in the region, the Kurdish forces remain their only hope. But the Kurds have been left alone in their fight against the Islamic State. Yazidi Kurds are a link between an ancient past and a secular future, and their protection should be a fundamental duty of all human beings. However, there are no massive marches, no world protests, no worldwide coverage or declarations of condemnations against this genocide. Why Muslim countries have been silent about this tragedy seems to be deeply rooted in their supremacist attitude toward non-Muslims or even non-Arabs, especially toward stateless peoples such as the Kurds and Baloch. The Muslim countries first classify, discriminate against, polarize and dehumanize those communities on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or religion, and then persecute or even exterminate them, as is commonly witnessed in the Muslim world. This could explain why Muslim countries remain insensitive to, if not become actively involved in, the killings of those peoples. But why the rest of the world remains a silent spectator in the face of this savagery is a riddle beyond comprehension. Isn't it time for the Western governments and leftist organizations to break their unholy alliance with Islamists who have been brutally annihilating the religious and ethnic minorities of the Middle East- The recent deadly attacks against Yazidi Kurds and Christians have shown once again that the ethnic and religious communities in an unstable Iraq are constantly at peril of further atrocities and genocides at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Do these communities not need and deserve a safe home where they will be free from threats and massacres? That home can only be an independent and sovereign Kurdistan. Uzay Bulut is a freelance journalist based in Ankara.
Hear the plight of Yazidi Kurds
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
