SHINGAL, Kurdistan Region—Several events will be held next week in Shingal to commemorate the assault on the city and the subsequent genocide against its Yezidi population on August 3, 2014, according to the organizers of the events.
Songs, music and theatrical performances have already been rehearsed on locations in Shingal to depict and relive the atrocities that were perpetrated by Islamist assassins against the largely defenseless Yezidi population in the city and its surrounding villages.
“I don’t know what to feel,” says Kazhin Ismail, a Yezidi performer who has prepared several acts and dances ahead of the events next week. “It is the day when they took our girls and killed our men in front of our eyes,” she says.
The events, which will be aired live on TV and radio next Wednesday, include stories told by the survivors and performed by artists. Arrangers say over 100 actors and performers are planned to take part in the events with diverse activities.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to serve as a Peshmerga and fight, but at least I can tell the horrible story to the world,” says Xellat Ismail an actor who will portray an ISIS assassin.
Official government reports say nearly 6000 Yezidi men, women and children were abducted in the first days of ISIS attack on Shingal in August last year.
Many of the female prisoners were transferred to Syria where they were treated as war trophies, while the majority of the men were executed, eyewitnesses have told Human Rights’ Watch.
Earlier last month, a special UN commission established that the violations committed by the ISIS militants against the Yezidi minority in Iraq is genocide.
“ISIS has sought to erase the Yezidis through killings; sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm,” the UN report said.
Iraq is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which makes it nearly impossible for the world tribunal to indict perpetrators of the Yezidi genocide inside Iraq.
Authorities in Kurdistan Region have said they are ready to cooperate with the ICC to bring international charges against known key figures within the ISIS in Shingal who could have ordered and perpetrated the attacks, according to Kurdish intelligence reports.
“What ever happens, we survived again and that we should be proud of,” says Kazhan the Yezidi female artist.
.png&w=3840&q=75)