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Iraq's Kurdish Yazidis dancing no more!
18.4.2008
By staff |
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April 18, 2008
Duhok, Kurdistan region 'Iraq, – Kurdish
Yazidi young man Samir Khaled Rashou used to join
the jovial beat dancing his religious group was
holding on their annual festivities until another
kind of tempo – that of bombs – forced them to stop
their celebrations.
"We are scared that armed groups might target us
again like they did last August when they spoiled
our jubilations," Rashou, 23, told Voices of Iraq.
In August 2007,
four suicide truck bombs
detonated simultaneously in the small village of
Qahataniya, Kar Izir, Siba Sheikh Khidr in
northwest Iraq, outside
Kurdistan region,
near the Iraqi border
Kurdish town of Sinjar, leaving at least 800 people
killed or wounded mostly Kurds.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombings,
Kurdistan regional president
Massoud Barzani dispatched
a force of
400 Kurdish militia
(Kurdistan national forces),
known as Peshmerga, to
Sinjar to protect the Yazidis — a provocative move
considering his official jurisdiction does not
extend to those lands.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Iraqi interior
ministry spokesman, then said there were three
suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At
least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed.
Sinjar, 120 km northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by
Yazidis, a religious minority whose followers are
generally situated in northern Iraq.
Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province in Iraq,www.ekurd.net
near the border with
Kurdistan region, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. A
Kurdish Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds located
near Mosul. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages
around Mosul near Kurdistan autonomous region
border.
"The celebrations this year are tasteless because my
friends emigrated from the country," Rashou
lamented.
A Yazidi writer, Khaled Bouzani, said that the
Yazidis, on their new year celebrations, light 365
lanterns in the courts of the highly venerated
Lalesh temple.
"The number of lanterns signify the number of days
in a year to indicate that Yazidis were receiving
the new year with light and illumination before the
sunset," Bouzani said.
The Lalesh temple is considered the holiest shrine
for Iraq's Yazidi community. It lies 60 km north of
Mosul.
A source from the consultative board of the Yazidi
Supreme Spiritual Council, speaking on condition of
anonymity, told VOI that this year, like the case
during the past four years, there were no
celebrations in Lalesh temple due to fears of
"terrorist" attacks, abnormal circumstances facing
the Yazidis and solidarity with "our Iraqi
brothers."
The Yazidi faith is not a missionary religion. Its
followers are concentrated in northern Iraq.
According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),
there are about 800,000 Yazidis all over the world.
550,000 of them live in Iraq and concentrated in the
district of Sinjar, where the temple Lalesh is
considered the holiest shrine for Yazidis, the
district of al-Shaykhan (50 km north of Mosul), the
district of Bueshiqa (15 km east of Mosul) and some
other areas and villages in the provinces of Ninewa
and Duhok.
Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live
near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia,
Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. The
estimates of their population size vary, partially
due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their
religious beliefs.
Yazidis worship seven angels, in the form of
peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who
created the universe.
A couple of related incidents in the spring
highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis.
In April 2007, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was
brutally beaten,
kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other
Yazidis in what authorities said was an "honor
killing" after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man.
Although she had not married him or converted, her
attackers believed she had. A 23 Yazidis were slain in April
2007 by gunmen
who apparently targeted them among passengers on a
bus in northern Iraq.
The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another
faith.
Kurdish Yazidis look to
Kurdistan region, the Kurdish Yazidis
are concentrated in key areas for the referendum,
including lands coveted by the Kurds north of Mosul
and around Sinjar on the Syrian border. The Kurds
see the referendum as a chance to right Saddam
Hussein's historic wrongs of forced population
transfer and Arabization. The Arabs see it as a
Kurdish land grab.
"We hope that the land now lived on by the Yazidis
will join the Kurdish area," the community's leader,www.ekurd.net
Amir Tahseen Beg, told the AP
in 2007 from his
residence in Sheikhan. "This will depend on the
referendum, but our areas must return to the
original motherland."
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
VOI, AP, Agencies
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