Winnipeg's Yazidi community reflects on 10 years since ISIS attack

Members of Winnipeg’s Yazidi community gathered inside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) on Saturday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a massacre perpetrated by ISIS militants.

The Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority predominately located in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq.

In 2014, ISIS swept through Yazidi villages and towns in the region forcing over 200,000 people to flee their homes. It’s believed more than 5,000 people were killed during the attack, and thousands more were forced into sexual slavery or recruited as child soldiers.

“[ISIS] committed a genocidal campaign against the Yazidi simply because of their religious beliefs,” Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, told CTV News Saturday.

Naso said many survivors are still reeling from the horrors they witnessed a decade ago.

“Many of them woke up, sent text and calls today saying, ‘I can’t believe it’s 10 years. It feels like yesterday. I can still feel my kids being ripped from my hands and I can still hear them screaming. I could still hear the gunshots and I could still feel the heat of that day,’” Naso recounted. “It is very much ongoing, and although the community has been scattered all across the world, for survivors… it’sa very hard day.”

On Saturday, survivors shared their stories at the museum while remembering lives lost and displaced.

“There isn’t really a single Yazidi family who hasn’t been impacted in some way by the genocide,” Naso said. “In our family, we had numerous people who were killed by ISIS during the initial attacks, and we’ve worked since 2014 to raise awareness about the plight of the Yazidis in Iraq.”

She said the Canadian Yazidi Association is advocating for enhanced safety throughout northern Iraq.

“Safety and security in this entire region is a huge priority and it’s stopping families from returning back to their ancestral homelands,” Naso said.

The Canadian Yazidi Association is also pushing to reunite more families here in Canada. To date, around 300 survivors have settled in Winnipeg through federal government programs. Meantime, Naso’s organization and partners like the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg have privately sponsored 65 Yazidi refugees through an initiative called Operation Ezra.

“Family reunification is really core for the resettlement success here,” she said. “A lot of the women here today have family members living in refugee camps [including] young kids. They are trying to push the government on reunifying them. So really, prioritizing survivors is what we’re working on here.”