Yazidi boy given up for dead, found alive
Winnipeg mom trying to get him home from Iraq
Nofa Zaghla thought her son was dead. The Yazidi refugee from northern Iraq, now living in Winnipeg with her four youngest children, was separated from the boy, Emad Mishko Tamo, in August 2014, after the family was captured by ISIL. She assumed the worst. Then, a few days ago, she got a call from her brother-inlaw in Iraq. Emad was alive, she learned. Rescued by the Iraqi army and pictured — on social media — in the passenger seat of a pick- up truck, clutching a bottle of water, looking frail and mud-caked and wide-eyed and blood-encrusted but alive, nonetheless.
“We didn’t think we would ever see him again,” Zaghla told CBC through a translator. “I was very saddened (by his condition) when I saw his photo … I spoke to him on the phone and he said, ‘ I’m OK, I’m going to be fine.’ ”
The 12-year-old is now in a refugee camp with an uncle. Zaghla’s hope is that the Canadian government will step in and hasten a reunion in Manitoba. The Yazidi Association of Manitoba is acting on her behalf. The organization has gone public with Emad’s story, in the hopes of spurring federal officials to act quickly to bring the boy to Canada.
“We’re asking to bring that child to be reunited with his mother,” association president Hadji Hesso said. “That’s all we want. That’s all the mother wants. “It’s all the child wants.” Yazidis are a Kurdish minority and practice an ancient faith, a blend of Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. ISIL views them as heretics. The group has been targeted for persecution. Many have been killed or abducted.
ISIL fighters besieged about 40,000 Yazidis on Mount Sinjar, the spiritual home of the religious group — Yazidis believe Noah’s Ark came to rest in the mountains — in 2014. Kurdish forces eventually broke the siege, and the United Nations has since called upon countries to accelerate the asylum applications of Yazidi victims of a reported genocide. In February, the federal government announced plans to accept about 1,200 survivors, specifically vulnerable Yazidi women and children and their families.
Zaghla lived peacefully with her husband and six children in Iraq until the summer of 2014, when their village was attacked, according to a letter written by the Manitoba association to members of Parliament. They were captured and lived in captivity for two years, during which time the association claims she was forced to serve as a sex slave to the militants.
As they were moved from place to place, she became separated from her husband and her two oldest sons, and when she managed to escape with four of her children during an attack on their compound, she made her way to Canada with no expectation she would see them again.
“We will never forget what (ISIL) did to us — the torture, the pain, everything they did to us,” Zaghla told CBC.
Zaghla has been speaking with her son “every hour, thanks to Facebook and Messenger,” said Hesso. “She was crying and happy at the same time. Tears of happiness.”
She still has not heard from her husband or other son. Emad is being treated for a bullet wound to his arm and injuries to his stomach.
“A 12-year-old child is not safe unless he is in the arms of his mother,” Hesso said. “That’s what we know; that’s the language we understand. “But he is safe.” The association is receiving help from the Kurdish Initiative for Refugees and Winnipeg Friends of Israel. Hesso said Canadian immigration officials have been contacted, and are being urged to treat Emad’s case as special.
Zaghla is thankful for everything her adopted country has done for her. She has one more wish: bring Emad home.
“We don’t want to be filling applications and documentation and such and such,” Hesso said. “We even offered to pay for the flight.”