At the third Yezidi Massacre Congress in Baghdad Thursday, Hikma Front leader Ammar al-Hakim said that Yezidis should stay in Iraq despite their continued displacement after the Islamic State (ISIS) genocide against them in 2014.
"The best response by the Yezidis to Daesh is that they should cling on to their homeland and soil and have love for their country and defend their civilization," said Hakim. "Migration to other countries...is not a solution because a generation will emerge in other countries who do not wish to return to their areas."
August 3 marks the fifth anniversary of the brutal raid of the predominanely Yezidi city of Shingal by ISIS. The attack saw many in the community massacred, kidnapped or forced to leave their homes.
Shingal was liberated from ISIS in 2015. Some Yezidis have since returned to the city, but political disputes, poor living conditions and security concerns contribute to thousands of them still staying in displaced persons camps in the Kurdistan Region. Shingal is claimed by both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, with the latter controlling it since 2017.
"In this case, we will lose an indigenous component of our country," said Hakim of Yezidi emigration.
Hakim called on the Yezidis to be "resilient" because if they abandon their areas, they will fulfill the goals ISIS was working towards, according to him.
"Abandoning our land and migration to other countries is the implementation of Daesh's project and subjugation to Daesh's oppression and the plot of extremists and terrorists," Hakim said.
Hakim also said Iraq needs to help defeat the issues that led to ISIS' rise.
"If we do not resolve the issues which contributed to the rise of ISIS in the first place, a more extremist group than ISIS might emerge in our country," he said, mentioning public services in liberated areas, for example.
An estimated 360,000 Yezidis live in camps and other places in the Kurdistan Region out of 550,000 Yezidis in total, according to statistics from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s Yezidi Rescue Office. 40,000 live in Shingal, according to the office.
ISIS took an estimated 6,417 women and girls from the Yezidi community when they attacked Shingal in 2014. Now, 3,509 have been freed. The fate of the remaining 2,908 remains unclear, despite ISIS' loss of its territory in Iraq and Syria, according to the Yezidi Rescue Office.
The Kurdistan Region Parliament is scheduled to convene a special session today to vote on making August 3 a day of rememberance of the Yezidi genocide.
