‘Only bones remain’: shattered Yazidis fear returning home
6 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/09/yazidis-isis-only-bones-remain-fear-returning-home
“They raped me every day, twice or more,” she recounts with remarkable composure. “I was just a child,” she says in her soft steady voice. “I can never forget it.”
Now a stubborn scar stains the cluster of towns and villages in the foothills of the Yazidis’ sacred mountain. Streets lie in ghostly silence, broken hulks of houses are still peppered with the bombs and booby-traps laid by Isis before they were pushed out of this area three years ago by Kurdish forces backed by US-led airstrikes.
Few aid agencies are on the ground here and Yazidis are left in limbo, caught in disputes between the local Kurdish administration and the central government in Baghdad.
“I cannot go back to my own village,” Bafrin says as we sit in the farmyard in the baking heat, a dark blue scarf with a sparkling trim framing her broad face. She chooses not to hide her face, or her name, as she tells a story which, like the accounts of many Yazidi women, is beyond anyone’s imagination. “There is no hope there will ever be life in my village. There are only bones of the dead.”
Such fine accounts coming out of New Zealand these days. I just find it... interesting.
who got permabanned this time?
Any system of ethics proposed from now on, and indeed perhaps ever proposed, must make light of such situations. The amount of loss contained in this series of events is incalculable, literally speaking.
I have exposed myself to as much world-born horror as I can, and yet stories such as this still send a shudder through my spine. I pray and hope for these people that they may have the option of a 'normal' and productive life.
May we, and God, help them.
It's bad enough just being a person of the book and finding yourself at the hands of these extremists; it seems to be double if you are an "other", particularly the Yazidis, who seem to be specifically hated.
I'd imagine it has a lot to do with the historic perception of them. Parallels have at times been drawn between Melek Taus and Iblis, so it's easy to see why they have unfortunately been a particular target of persecution.
Another account flagged NZ posting horrid comments. Glad it's gone, but there'll probably be more.
As for the article, I don't even know what to say. IS members deserve to be hunted down like dogs for crimes like these but I doubt they'll ever all be caught.
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