After prolonged trek to Armenia, Iraq’s Yazidi families onslaught to fit in
Yazidis who could leave Sinjar, Iraq fled to a interloper camps of Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere in a region. Around 50 families came to Armenia. PHOTO: AFP
ARAKS, ARMENIA: Shortly before midnight outward a poorly-lit stable in southern Armenia, Sevak Mouradyan is funneling gallons of petrol into cosmetic canisters and humming a normal Yazidi anthem to himself.
He pauses for a moment, squints by a dark towards a organisation of organisation celebration tea and starts to scream orders.
His 8 sons quickly form a prolongation line from a stable by a field. Tires are upheld methodically between them, rolled ascending and built in a raise during a top.
“We are scheming a glow to uncover togetherness with a brothers on Mount Sinjar,” pronounced Mouradyan, hauling a fuel onto his back.
“For a Yazidi people, light signifies solidarity. Maybe they will see a glow distant divided in a stretch and know that we are meditative of them.”
Mouradyan is one of around 35,000 Armenian Yazidis who have been staid in Armenia in southern Caucasus for some-more than a century. They have recently been assimilated by Yazidi families who have fled a supposed Islamic State’s descent in northern Iraq.
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In Aug 2014, Islamic State militants began an attack on a Yazidi eremite community’s heartland in Sinjar, northern Iraq, home to around 400,000 Yazidis.
The insurgents evenly killed, prisoner and deferential thousands of Yazidis, whose beliefs mix elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and are regarded by IS as infidels.
United Nations investigators guess some-more than 5,000 Yazidis have been dull adult and slaughtered and some 7,000 women and girls forced into sex slavery.
Those who could fled to a interloper camps of Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere in a region. Around 50 Yazidi families done a strenuous tour by highway to Armenia, seeking retreat among their associate Yazidis in farming communities like a encampment of Araks.
“Too different”
But Armenian Yazidis trust that their racial family from Sinjar have been shabby by a Islamic traditions of a Iraqi majority.
“Our proceed of life is too opposite from theirs. They are all Muslims now,” Mouradyan said. “We fear that they will move instability and apprehension to a homes.”
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In a encampment of Akna Lich, an hour’s expostulate away, Ara, one of a new arrivals, has usually returned home after a prolonged day cultivating a land outward his home. He and his mother changed to a mostly Yazidi encampment late final year.
“We suspicion we would find assent here, though it’s difficult,” pronounced Ara, who did not wish to give his full name.
“Here they consider we are too different, that we are not genuine Yazidis anymore,” he said, stealing his boots and fixation them orderly outward a door.
Kurdish army retook areas north of Sinjar in Dec 2014, and a city itself in Nov 2015.
Christoph Bierwirth, deputy for a UN interloper organisation UNHCR in Armenia, pronounced given Yazidi land in Sinjar has been retaken from IS many of a Iraqi Yazidis have returned to their homeland. Their preference was encouraged in partial by problems they faced integrating in Armenia, he said.
“They were welcomed in a tiny encampment with, on one palm an open proceed from a internal race and, on a other, with some misunderstandings about either their prayers are Muslim or of another form,” Bierwirth told a Thomson Reuters Foundation during his bureau in a Armenian collateral Yerevan.
“The lifestyle is unequivocally opposite for those in a Sinjar plateau and a Yazidi communities here,” he said.
New temple
Since Jan 2016 a Armenian supervision has contributed $100,000 to a UNHCR to support a resettlement of Yazidis from Sinjar, pronounced Bierwirth.
Integration efforts continue to be a plea for a authorities, balancing complaints from both communities, internal officials said.
“This area is a churned village: half Yazidi, half Armenian,” Mayor Gevork Misakian explained during his bureau in Akna Lich.
“It was motionless that a arrivals from Sinjar should come here in sequence for them to stabilise. There have been some complications, though we continue to try a best to safeguard there is harmony,” Misakian added.
In an bid to well-spoken integration, a supervision has started construction of a largest Yazidi church outward Iraq to commemorate those killed during Sinjar and to honour Armenian Yazidis.
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“In Armenia, a sacrament is supposed though in Iraq, they ceremony unequivocally differently,” pronounced Sheikh Alehan as he prepared to control a wake of a internal Yazidi.
“No matter what happens, even if there is usually one (Yazidi) left in a world, we will never change a religion. This is a disproportion with those from Sinjar,” he added.
The latest call of harm – described by a UN as a genocide – is another comfortless proviso in Yazidi history.
“The Yazidi nationality is underneath threat,” he said. “Genocide has turn a partial of a history, so we contingency do all we can to strengthen a identity. The church is a pitch of that resilience.”
Bierwirth says that efforts such as this will assistance to safeguard both existent and new members of a Yazidi village in Armenia can continue to use their faith, and assistance a whole village to thrive, rather than to find new lives elsewhere.
“Given a singular distance of a organisation and out-flux migration, a Yazidis don’t have adequate priests, that they need to follow a bone-fide devout life,” he said. “That is a cause for many Yazidis to demeanour for opportunities outward Armenia.”
But for new arrivals like Ara, life has been a struggle.
“All we can wish for is to equivocate any disputes, to keep a heads down and to continue working,” Ara says. “Only afterwards will we unequivocally be safe.”
Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1397558/long-trek-armenia-iraqs-yazidi-families-struggle-fit/