The Borneo Post (Sabah)

IS committing genocide against Yazidis in Iraq

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WASHINGTON: The Islamic State group is committing genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi community, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a report Thursday based on harrowing interviews detailing rape, torture and murder.

A Kurdish-speaking minority mostly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq, the Yazidis are neither Arabs nor Muslims and have a unique faith the militants consider to be heretical and polytheist­ic.

When in the summer of 2014 the jihadists made an unexpected push into parts of northern Iraq, many Yazidis were massacred and abducted.

Tens of thousands scrambled up Mount Sinjar in a panic and remained stranded there for days with no food or water.

“The crime of genocide is ongoing against the Yazidi population as women and children who have been kidnapped in large numbers remain enslaved by their captors,” said Cameron Hudson, director of the museum’s SimonSkjod­t Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which authored the report.

The centre conducted a twoweek trip to the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh in September to learn about atrocities that took place there, assess the current situation and understand future risks to minorities and other civilians in the region.

“We didn’t just see the intent” to commit genocide, “we actually saw acts representi­ng that intent,” said Naomi Kikoler, deputy director of the centre, who traveled to Iraq to do the interviews.

“We also saw statements from the Islamic State and their various propaganda outlets explaining and affirming their actions being taken in accordance with their extremist ideology.”

Thecentrew­roteinitsr­eportthat it “heard harrowing accounts of displaceme­nt, forced conversion, rape, torture, kidnapping and murder.” — AFP

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