Yazidism is a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern religion with a remote origin (about 2,000 years BC). It originates from the ancient Persian religions and is peaceful and tolerant. Its holy city is Lalish, in the province of Nineveh, formerly Mossul (Iraq), and it was the main religion among the Kurds until the 5th century AD, when mandatory Islamisation left them in a small minority that has been much persecuted ever since. Most live near Mossul, and there are also small communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria and Turkey. In total there would have been some 800,000 people before the genocide they were subjected to, first by Al-Qaeda and then by ISIS, who accused them of devil worship. There are Yazidi refugees in Germany and North America. Two of those who represent their struggle against extermination and suffering
are Nadia Murad and Farida Abbas. At age nineteen, Nadia Murad was kidnapped by ISIS, tortured and used as spoils of war and a sex slave, after seeing her whole family (mother, brothers, etc.) murdered. One day she was able to escape and request asylum in Germany, where she has been helped financially and has received medical and psychological assistance. With the support of the Yazidi Yazda organisation, she decided to tell her story, demand justice before the International Criminal Court and meet with most of the world’s political leaders. As leader of the movement, she received the Sakharov Prize and that of the Association for the United Nations in Spain (ANUE) in Barcelona, among others, for her struggle for human rights and her people. Farida Abbas is one of the 6,500 Yazidi survivors of the genocide perpetrated by ISIS. Born in Kojo (northern Iraq), she was a student when ISIS attacked her people, killed all the men and took the women and children as hostages. For four months she suffered all kinds of mental and physical torture and was used as a sex slave, until she was able to escape from her kidnappers. Like Nadia, she has published a book and has given numerous lectures and interviews in which she explains the suffering of the Yazidi people.
LiberPress Catalonia Award 2017
The Yazidi people received the 2017 LiberPress Catalonia Award for the persecution and suffering they have endured throughout their existence as a religious minority, especially in recent years, in which there has been a veritable extermination (which we have to describe as genocide). In homage to all its men, women and children who have been tortured, enslaved and killed, and those who have become new refugees after the terrible diaspora of this community, which is so well represented by Nadia Murad and Farida Abbas, brave fighters for their people, for their memory, for peace and for universal justice for their murderers.