ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The remains of 41 Yazidis massacred in 2014 by Islamic State (ISIS) in the group’s brutal genocide against the ethno-religious community were returned to their village of Kocho on Thursday, having been identified in a year-long process overseen by the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh (UNITAD) in Baghdad.
Coffins of the identified 26 men and 15 women, killed by ISIS in August 2014 along with thousands of Yazidis as the group raged destruction through the region, were borne by Iraqi soldiers and laid to rest in a burial ceremony in the village of Kocho in the Shingal region of Iraq.
ISIS extremists swept across Shingal in the summer of 2014, attacking the Yazidi heartland in Nineveh province and massacaring 1,200 people within days of the attack, capturing over 6,000 predominantly women and children who were subsequently sold into slavery and in numerous and horrific cases killed.
According to academics and activists, 2,763 women and children remain unaccounted for.
This is the second group of remains to be identified and returned to surviving families, enabling relatives and loved ones to hold a ceremony according to the community's religious and cultural practices. In February, 104 Yazidi victims were buried in Kocho village.
Kiche Ammo Slo, a survivor of the massacre in Kocho, told Rudaw on Thursday that he and other villagers were locked in the village school for 15 days by ISIS.
“They gathered us and separated men from women at around 11 or 12pm,” he said, adding that the men were taken to different places.
“We were between 30 and 40 people. They said that we had to convert to Daesh’s ideology or be killed. We rejected this, so they put us in vehicles and killed us,” he said, although he managed to escape death.
Along with the families of those who did not survive, Thursday’s ceremony was attended by Iraqi officials, UN agencies and diplomats. Christian Ritscher, head of UNITAD, assured survivors that they have the international community’s support and that his UN team would continue to investigate ISIS crimes and hold all those who committed crimes against humanity and genocide to account.
“I assure you that you are not forgotten. I believe we have the opportunity to turn the tide from impunity to justice and I am confident that we are one step closer to justice”, he said at the ceremony in Kocho.
Naif Jasim, mukhtar (chieftain) of Kocho village, said at the ceremony that they will continue to identify all of the remaining victims of the massacre.
“So far, the identities of 360 corpses in 25 mass graves have been excavated. 145 dead bodies from Kocho village have been identified: 104 of them were identified and buried earlier this year and today the other 41 will be buried,” he said.
The Yazidi organisation Yazda said in a statement on Wednesday that five days of mourning will follow Thursday's burial, adding that 17 mass graves have so far been exhumed in Kocho; thousands of bodies awaiting exhumation and DNA identification.
Nadia Murad, human rights activist and Yazidi survivor from the Kocho community, tweeted on Thursday that her heart was with all families who “will finally be able to honor their loved ones.”
“Yet, thousands of families still wait to bury relatives, which is why we must push for expedited exhumations,” the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate added.
Today, my community buried 41 Yazidi victims (26 men & 15 women) of the Kocho massacre. My heart is with all families who will finally be able to honor their loved ones. Yet, thousands of families still wait to bury relatives, which is why we must push for expedited exhumations. pic.twitter.com/u8nj4QQD9z
— Nadia Murad (@NadiaMuradBasee) December 9, 2021
Hussein Qassim, Yazidis representative at Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Rudaw that the process of excavation is not easy, as it “takes much time and it also needs a high budget.”
Last week, a court in Frankfurt sentenced a former ISIS member to life imprisonment on charges of crimes against the Yazidis. The man’s wife was sentenced to ten years in prison earlier in October, for aiding and abetting war crimes that included enslaving a Yazidi woman and child who died of thirst after being chained-up in the heat of Fallujah in Anbar province.
Kurdish leaders welcomed the court’s sentencing of the ISIS member to life imprisonment, and leaders also paid respect to the victims of genocide on Thursday.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani commented in a tweet, that “On the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, we honor victims of genocide across the world. We reaffirm our commitment to defend coexistence & tolerance, support justice for victims, and join efforts to prevent a new genocide.”
Delivered by Dindar Zebari, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani provided a statement of his remarks to the burial ceremony in Kocho, paying his respects to the “victims of one of the most appalling acts in history” and praising the resilience of the Yazidi community “in keeping their culture and identity.”
“The regional government (KRG) has documented 5,170 cases of ISIS’ crimes against the Yazidis, from which 2,324 cases have gone through the required investigation phases,” Zebari, the KRG Coordinator for International Advocacy, said on the prime minister's behalf. “It is worth noting that the KRG has succeeded in harnessing efforts to rescue 3, 500 members of the Yazidi community.”
“The Council of Ministers of the Kurdistan Region formed the High Committee to Recognise the Crimes Committed against the Yazidis as Genocide. The committee has endeavoured to convey the agonies of the Yazidis to the International Criminal Court and hence to obtain international recognition for these dreadful crimes that were committed against the Yazidis. In this respect, it requests UNITAD to speed up the process of trying ISIS terrorist for core crimes under international law, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide,” the statement continued.
“As far as KRG is concerned, a draft law has been prepared that manifests the three core crimes,” the prime minister’s statement read. “This is an important law to prosecute ISIS. Any efforts to obstruct its enactment will be a setback in rendering the terrorists accountable for their heinous crimes in a timely manner.
“UNAMI should put more extensive efforts into restoring peace and stability in Shingal, and this will overwhelmingly be achieved by supporting the execution of this agreement… What happened in Sinjar is a catastrophe that shook the depths of our conscience and expressed the criminalized approach of this organization and its bloody ideology. Efforts must be intensified at home and abroad in order to define it as a crime of genocide and to find and return the abductees,” the prime minister concluded.
On 1 March 2021, the Iraqi parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors Law which is intended to provide a reparations framework for survivors of ISIS crimes, including women and girls who were subjected to sexual violence, as well as child survivors who were abducted before the age of 18.
Despite this, Amnesty International criticised the Iraqi government in November for a lack of meaningful support for the Yazidi community, saying it had “largely ignored the significant recommendations made by Iraqi civil society organizations on the regulations, meaning they lack a survivor-centred approach and fail to establish accountability mechanisms and processes for outreach, applications and review of claims.”
In a separate report released last year, Amnesty International documented how almost 2,000 Yazidi children who have returned to their families after being held captive by IS are facing a physical and mental health crisis.
