Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Baghdad

Canada to receive 1200 more Yazidi migrants

 Canada to receive 1200 more Yazidi migrants

Yazidi migrants in northern Iraq.

Yazidi migrants in northern Iraq.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Canada has said it was going to receive this year 1200 migrants from Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic-religious minority which has sustained torture and massacres by Islamic State militants since 2014.

Migration minister Ahmed Hussein said Tuesday those will add to 400 who had already been admitted into the country.

The announcement comes as part of a law passed by the parliament last autumn which stipulated receiving, within four months, Yazidis who survived IS genocides. Applying the 20 million- euros -plan, Hussein said, the government will be giving special focus to women and girls, but young boys would also be relocated.

Thousands of Yazidi Kurds fled Sanjar, a Mosul region on the borders with Syria, to nearby mountain areas following its fall to Islamic State militants in August 2014. The extremist group massacred, enslaved and tortured thousands of that ethno-religious minority.

Data in 2015 from Iraq’s office on Yazidi kidnapping victims showed that 2640 Yazidis were released from captivity by Islamic State militants over the past two years, but there are 3770 others still in the extremist group’s hold.

The Kurdish-speaking community came to the spotlight when Islamic State militants, taking over large parts of Iraq, victimized its members, committing massacres and subjecting them to forced conversions, sexual slavery and other reported atrocities.

On Tuesday, Iraqi parliamentarian Fayan Dakhil warned that many “terrorists” had begun to escape to Europe via Turkey, taking with them many Yazidi women and children captives, using forged travel documents.

Leave a Reply