New suicide attack in Iraq overshadows commemoration service of the Yezidi community in Germany

A suicide attack in the town of Sinjar, which is mainly inhabited by Yezidi Kurds in the north-west of Iraq overshadows a commemoration service of the Yezidi living in Lower Saxony planned for this coming Sunday in Hanover. On Thursday two terrorists blew themselves up in a popular cafe in the centre of Sinjar. At least 18 people were killed and 32 were injured. The attack took place the day before the second anniversary of the devastating attack of extremist Islamists on two estates of the Yezidi, in which on 14th August 2007 a total of 336 people were killed and about 1000 families rendered homeless.

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) estimates that hundreds of Yezidi from all over Lower Saxony will be coming to the memorial service in the Lower Saxon capital, which is being organised by the Yezidi living in Hanover. In the attack of 14th August 2007 two Yezidi estates were completely destroyed. Islamist extremists had driven several lorries, among them a petrol tanker disguised as a water-carrier, loaded with explosives into the two estates and set them off simultaneously.

The memorial service on Sunday, 16.08.2009 begins at 12.00 noon in Hanover at the Bürgerschule (Schaufelder Str. 30). The Chairperson of the GfbV, Tilman Zülch, will be speaking.

In the province of Nineveh, in which the mountainous region of Sinjar lies, there have been in the recent past several attacks on Kurds (Moslems and Yezidi), Turkmens, Shabak and Christian Assyrian Chaldaeans. The GfbV warns that the purpose of this Islamist and Arab-nationalist terror is to set off a new civil war in this multi-ethnic and multi-religious province The Iraqi central government in Baghdad is instrumentalising the terror to send Arab-Iraqi troops into the disputed areas, in which the majority favours annexation to the federal state of Kurdistan. These troops are often infiltrated by terrorists, as the experience of Baghdad goes to show. For that reason they pose a great danger for Kurdistan. Many officers of the old Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein are now back in service. Peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan is for them as supporters of the old totalitarian regime, which was responsible for the genocide against the Kurds with at least 500,000 dead, a thorn in their side.

The GfbV calls for a plebiscite on the question of the annexation of the Sinjar region, the main settlement area of the Yezidi. 550,000 members of this religious community live there. The overwhelming majority of the Yezidi favour annexation to the north-Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan, one reason being that this region is at peace. The security forces there are in a position to protect the population from terrorist attacks.

The Yezidi are a religious minority among the Moslem Kurds. They are a Near East religious community going back thousands of years who speak the Kurmanci variant of Kurdish. Their total number is estimated by the GfbV at around 800,000 in the Near East and the European disaspora. While there are in Iraq more than half a million Yezidi, there are in Armenia still about 18,000, in Syria about 5,000 and in Georgia still 1,200. The approximately 50,000 Yezidi in Germany came mostly as religious refugees from Turkey. The number there is estimated at somewhat more than 400.