YAZIDI MISSION: A SEAT AT THE TABLE

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PURPOSE OF MISSION

This humanitarian mission is the first phase effort to enable the Yazidi people to restore their sovereign diplomatic status, by raising $50,000 to fund development of legal infrastructure and diplomatic support advancing their international human rights and indigenous rights, placing Yazidis in the best strategic position to defend the rights of Christians and other minorities.

This will also help to establish the legal evidence and official complaint necessary under international law, enabling an International Court to issue a "Declaratory Judgment", finally empowering the Yazidi people to directly participate in United Nations level negotiations as an indigenous nation-state, also representing the Yazidi coalition with Christians and other minorities.

A CASE FOR ACTION

The Yazidi people have been recognized by universities as “One of the world’s most endangered religious minorities”, with their fate tied to that of Christians and others in the Middle East (Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion [2018], The Yazidis: Summary).

The Yazidis together with Christians have been widely recognized as officially under “Genocide”, by declarations of the UN Human Rights Council (Article 201), European Parliament (Section 2), US Congress (Article 1) and US Senate (Article 1), and United Kingdom Parliament (House of Commons Letter).

Despite such recognition and political declarations pledging support and protection, there has been no real help, no intervention, and no solutions for the Yazidi people from the “international community” of countries.  World powers allowed the Genocide to continue, giving the Yazidis no rights, no means – and no voice – for their human survival as an ethno-religious indigenous people. 

Now is essentially the last chance in the course of human history, to finally do something to intervene – to empower Yazidi leaders to have a “Seat at the Table” in governmental negotiations which have continued to ignore them – enabling the Yazidi people to protect themselves and other persecuted minorities.  Only through this Mission, can we help ensure survival of the Yazidis, for the major world heritage carried by their people to benefit future generations of humanity.

The success of "YAZIDI MISSION: A SEAT AT THE TABLE" would finally create a very real opportunity for sovereignty, dignity, justice and a voice for the re-establishment of the Yazidi nation, and restoration of its own Kingdom of "Ezidikhan".

This would in turn, set a precedent and create a template for the preservation of all indigenous tribes and peoples of the world.

A "declaratory judgment" from an International Justice Court, proving the sovereign diplomatic status of the Yazidi people as an indigenous nation-state, will empower them to directly represent themselves at U.N. level negotiations, finally giving them a real and official “Seat at the Table”.

Empowered in this way, a reconstituted Yazidi Nation, and its restored Kingdom of "Ezidikhan" will also strategically empower the Yazidis to best defend the rights of Christians and other ethno-religious minorities in the region, and help bring greater long-term stability throughout the Middle East.

OVERVIEW OF FACTS

The Yazidi people are an ethno-religious alliance of related tribes. They are widely recognized in encyclopedias as being "the original inhabitants of ancient Sumeria and Mesopotamia".

Excavated Cuneiform Tablets of the Sumerian civilization constitute our earliest known writings and record of civilization, making the Yazidis the true indigenous people of Iraq, and arguably the original inhabitants of "The Cradle of Civilization".

On August 3, 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) launched an attack on Sinjar and its surrounding villages, forcing the Yazidi people to flee to their holy mountain of Mt. Sinjar.

What made this attack especially destructive, was that the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga Forces, who were charged with protecting the inhabitants of the Sinjar District, withdrew their army back to Erbil, right before the attack was launched, with no warning given to the targets of the imminent massacres.

What happened next, was that tens of thousands fled high into the mountains. As the ISIS forces surrounded the mountain, many perished in the 120 degree heat for lack of food and especially water.

The captured men who refused "forced conversion" to a radical form of Islam, were executed and thrown in mass graves. 

The boys who were "not old enough to grow hair in their arm pits" were kidnapped, indoctrinated and trained as child soldiers and suicide bombers.

Thousands of women and girls were also captured, only to be raped and sold as sex slaves. ISIS soldiers were reported to have said, “Where is my Yazidi girl?" and "If she has blue eyes she will cost more.”

As quoted by BBC reporter Paul Wood on December 22, 2014, “The Islamic State sought to eradicate their culture, their religion and their bloodline”.

It wasn’t until the UN report of June 16, 2016, that the events were officially classified as "genocide". Despite that, some countries still refuse to accept the UN definition.

The eventual liberation of Sinjar left the surrounding villages and most of the region in ruins and uninhabitable.  Funds raised to help the Yazidi cause arguably were not used to directly help the Yazidi people, nor to benefit or support any legitimate official leadership of the Yazidi nation.

The world insists on calling the Yazidi people "Kurds", but the Yazidis insist that they are not Kurds, with facts in university scholarship strongly supporting this position, as geo-politically inconvenient as that is.

Currently, the Kurdish leadership claims to speak on the behalf of the Yazidi people on the world stage, without any legal nor factual basis, and the vast majority of the Yazidis resent, distrust and fear such unauthorized "representation".

If nothing is done about this situation, the Yazidi people fear their forced assimilation into a future "Kurdistan", hijacking their own unique indigenous etho-religious identity, and that their long-protected ancient bloodline will quickly be erased by the ongoing genocide and raping of their women and girls.

The fate of the Yazidi people is of greater concern and urgency now, as the dominant military countries hold more official negotiations only with the Kurds, who actively suppress the Yazidis while falsely claiming to represent them.  This is moving closer towards establishment of an autonomous “Kurdistan”, which would suppress the Yazidi identity and expose Yazidis to more genocide, on a permanent basis.

 

ONGOING SAFE HAVEN FOR CHRISTIANS AND OTHER MINORITIES

The Yazidi Prince Naif has already taken a leading role in unifying the minority ethnic and minority religious groups in Iraq.

In March 2017, he led a coalition of Iraqi minorities in creating the "National Coalition For Al Rafidien  Region", signed by the "Yazidi Independent Supreme Council", the "Turkmen Rescue Foundation", and the "Al Rafidien Organization", which represents Iraq's Assyrian Christians.       

Prince Naif's initiative is widely regarded as the best vehicle for securing a protected area in which Christians can practice their faith, and meet in relative safety.   

This coalition will be most effectively represented and advanced by a restored Kingdom of “Ezidkhan” as a sovereign nation-state in diplomatic relations under international law.

Hence it is very much in the interests of the international Christian community to support the Yazidi initiative to secure for themselves a self-governing region, by invoking enabling provisions of the Iraqi Constitution, rather than allow their forced assimilation into the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Such a semi-autonomous regional government led by the Yazidis, similar to that of the KRG, is undoubtedly the best and safest solution for Christians to support, in defense of Christian freedom of worship in Iraq.