The Yezidi living in Germany are commemorating this Saturday in Lollar
near Giessen the victims of the dreadful attack at Sinjar in the
north-west of Iraq, in which one year ago 336 Yezidi were killed and
1000 families made homeless. The Society of the Yezidi living in
Giessen, which is organising the memorial service, is expecting hundreds
of Yezidi from all over Germany, many Christian and Moslem guests and as
an outstanding participant the temporal head of the Yezidi from Iraq,
Mir Tahsim Saeed Beg.
In the attack on 14th August 2007 two Yezidi estates were completely
destroyed. Moslem terrorists had filled several lorries with explosives,
one of which was disguised as a water-carrier, driven them into the two
towns and set them off simultaneously.
The Yezidi are a religious minority among the Kurds, who are for the
most part Moslems. They are a religious community, which is thousands of
years old and neither Christian nor Islamic, speaking a Kurmanci dialect
of Kurdish. Their total number is estimated by the Society for
Threatened Peoples at approximately 800,000 in the Near-East and in the
European diaspora. Most of them live in the north of Iraq, where there
are some 550,000. In Armenia there are about 18,000 Yezidi, in Syria
about 5,000 and in Georgia still 1,200. The approximately 50,000 Yezidi
living in Germany came mostly as religious refugees from Turkey. Their
number there today is estimated at something above 400.
In the north-west Iraqi mountainous region of Sinjar the Yezidi make up
with about 400,000 about 80% of the population. The roads leading from
the province of Mosul to this north-western mountainous region are
mostly blocked or only passable at risk of death. The only link which
offers a degree of safety runs through Dohuk and Al-Rabia, although here
too the threat of attack by Islamist terrorists is increasing.
The memorial service takes place on Saturday, 16.08.2008 and begins at
15.30
in the Justus-Killian-Str. 25 in 35457 Lollar near Giessen.
The GfbV Near-East consultant, Dr. Kamal Sido, is available to answer
questions at tel. ++49 (0)551 49906-18.
