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September 7 2014 | ANTWERP, BELGIUM

The pain of the Yazidi people in the heart of Europe. The witness of Vian Dakheel

Her words received a standing ovation from the packed hall

 
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A dramatic witness, that of Vian Dakheel, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Yazidi community, during the opening assembly of the International Meeting of Prayer for Peace in Antwerp. Massacres, kidnappings, violence against women, children and helpless elderly of this peaceful religious community of Mesopotamia, whose origins date back to the third millennium before Christ. 3000 people dead, killed by the militia of the Isis or exhausted by hunger and thirst during the escape to the mountains of Sinjar. 5000 people abducted, hundreds of girls raped or sold into slavery, as in the city of Mosul where they were offered at a price of $ 150. In the village of Kojo, inhabited by Yazidis in 2000, the inhabitants were forced to choose between conversion to Islam and the massacre. An ancient shrine in the village of Jdala where the militia of the caliphate had brought the elderly has been blown up. Many children died from fatigue and the intense heat in this biblical exodus that involved more than 120 thousand people.

At the end of her speech Vian Dakheel has launched an urgent appeal to the international community, asking the Committee for Human Rights and the UN Security Council to launch an investigation into the massacre, which involved Yazidis, to facilitate the procedures for asylum for migrants Yazidi fled to western countries, to set up a protection of peacekeeping troops to stop violence against minorities in the regions in which they live, to provide humanitarian aid in areas of Sinjar and Nineveh, and finally to make everything to free more than 5,000 women and children who have been abducted by ISIS Yazidi and hundreds of girls who have been raped.


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