Afrinpost
Today, Monday, the Union of Syrian Yezidis issued a statement regarding the visit of the head of the so-called “Syrian Coalition” to the Yazidi Kurdish village of Basufan in the countryside of the occupied Kurdish region of Afrin in northern Syria.
The statement said: “At the beginning of the battle that Turkey launched on January 20, 2018 to occupy Afrin, the first act of sabotage it carried out was the destruction of the ancient Ain Dara temple, which dates back to 1300 BC, with its warplanes, because Turkey knows that it will not be able to control Afrin if the Kurdish culture in general, and the Yazidis in particular, were not destroyed, and Turkey lit the green light for the militant factions, by destroying the shrines of the Yazidis, so they destroyed shrines in the Yazidi villages of Qastal Jindo, Sinka, Baflon, and the Qara Jirne shrine, and with the arrival of the militants to the city of Afrin, several factions of the Syrian Coalition rushed to destroy the headquarters of the Yezidis Cultural and Social Association in the city of Afrin, and the militants continued to destroy the shrines of the villages of Qibar, Tirinde and Shader.
The statement continued: “After the armed factions of the Syrian Coalition took control of the area, they closed the Yazidi schools that were opened by the Autonomous Administration to teach the Yazidi religion, and those factions opened schools to teach the Islamic religion, opened mosques in Yazidi villages, and imposed on Yazidi women to wear Islamic dress. The extremists tried to force the Yazidis to leave their religion and convert to Islam, and the first person they killed in cold blood was the martyr Omar Mammo from the Yazidi village of Qibar, who refused to pronounce shahada, and they pressured the Yazidis to expel them from their villages and bring settlers from Ghouta, Idlib and Homs to bring about a demographic change.
The statement added: “All this was done in full view of the Syrian coalition and the Turkish state without moving to put an end to the violations or restraining its militant factions. Rather, the coalition and the Turkish occupation army were turning a blind eye to all those violations that they carried out, until the Yazidis lived in terror for fear of violating their dignity, and the bulk of them hurried to pay huge sums to leave their villages, as the militants were opening the way for the Yazidis to leave their homes to house the settlers instead of them. So that only some elderly people remained in the Yazidi villages (for example: the village of Basufan, the number of Yazidis before the revolution was about three thousand people, but now there are only 200 two hundred people left, most of them elderly).
The statement concluded by saying: “We in the Union of Syrian Yezidis condemn Hariri’s visit to the Yazidi village of Basufan and the rest of Afrin’s villages, and we consider it a provocative visit whose first goal is to ensure that his and Turkey’s plan to bring about demographic change is going according to what they planned, and to continue terrorizing the indigenous population, and we demand human rights organizations and countries concerned, by pressuring Turkey to withdraw its forces, factions and settlers from all of Syria, so that the displaced, who were forcibly displaced by Turkey, return to their villages and properties, end their suffering, and compensate the affected with fair compensation.
