Daesh Still 'Committing Genocide' against Izadis: UN
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Daesh (also known as ISIL and ISIS) terrorists are still committing genocide against the Izadi minority in Iraq and Syria, United Nations rights investigators said Thursday.
"Genocide has occurred and is ongoing," Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria said in a statement, AFP reported.
"ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities," he added.
The Kurdish-speaking minority is mostly based around Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq.
In 2014, Daesh terrorists massacred Izadis in Sinjar, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee, and capturing thousands of girls and women as spoils of war.
The UN warned last year that the Takfiri group appeared to be committing genocide against the Izadis, but the COI's report "They came to destroy: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis", published Thursday, was more conclusive.
Based partly on interviews with survivors, the report found that Daesh "sought to erase the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment."
It was holding Izadis in conditions "that bring about a slow death," and was transferring Izadi children from their families to live with ISIL militants, "cutting them off from beliefs and practices of their own religious community," the report said.
It showed that men and boys over 12 were separated from their families, while thousands of women and girls, some as young as nine, were sold in slave markets.
The report said some 3,200 Izadi women and children were currently being held by Daesh, mainly in Syria, where the females were used as sex slaves and the young boys were being indoctrinated and trained as fighters.
