The Government of Ezidikhan has approved a Charter for the Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal (NICT) tasked with bringing to trial individuals or entities accused of acts of genocide stemming from the August 2014 onslaught against the Yezidi nation by ISIS and its co-conspirators.
Ezidikhan’s fledgling diplomatic corps, led by Supreme Spiritual Council head Baba Salem, is urging indigenous nations to ratify the NICT Charter.
According to their oral history, Yezidis have suffered from 72 massacres prior to the 2014 genocide of Yezidis in Iraq. “Over the course of 700 years,” according to the Yezidis International Organization, “nearly 23 million Yezidi people have been murdered, thus bringing their civilization to the brink of extinction.”
Dr. Abdul Qader Al-Rawi, the Senior Investigator for the Ezidikhan Investigative Team on Genocide, has been shot and killed yesterday outside his home by an assassin at close range while leaving on his way to his clinic in Anbar Province.
Ezidikhan Prime Minister Barjis Soso Kalaf has rejected statements made by neighboring Kurdistan Region’s Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s during a speech earlier this week . Barzani’s statements, says Prime Minister Barjis, amount to a threat to occupy and administer Shingal against the will of the Yezidi people. “The people of Shingal utterly rcondemn any attempt by Barzani to forcibly take political or physical control of Ezidikhan, its people or its resources. Barzani’s words and actions are in violation of international law and the Iraqi constitution. Ezidikhan joins Iraq’s leadership in working to protect Iraq’s sovereignty and integrity.”
Prime Minister Barjis Soso Kalaf has designated as Senior Investigator for the team Mr. Abo Sunds Aliafry, a legal investigator with fifteen years experience. Mr. Aliafry began organizing the investigative team in late December 2018 and plans to begin the work of the Team in January 2019.
Using France’s “asylum visa,” any resident of France can privately sponsor a Yezidi family. The private sponsor pledges to provide housing and orientation for the asylum-seekers. The French government provides food support and social services.
The new investigative team will probe all crimes and identify suspects whether persons, groups or institutions that may have committed genocide including but not limited to Da’esh and its allies and crimes attributable to Iraqi governmental forces, at the federal or regional level (like Kurdish regional forces); militia such as the Popular Mobilization Forces; or international forces.
Ezidikhan Prime Minister Barjis Soso Khalaf “rejects most emphatically” as “political extortion” the Kurdish Regional Government and Iraqi Government demand that the Ezidikhan Governing Council retract its 16 November Resolution charging the Kurdish government with acts of genocide and the Iraqi and US governments complicity in those acts.
Armenian MP Rustam Makhmudyan, a Yezidi, urged Armenia’s Parliament to “not only condemn the genocide against the Yezidi people, but also investigate the crimes through international agencies, pursue the perpetrators of the crimes and hold them accountable, and to take measures to prevent similar actions in the future”.