Six years later, Yazidi genocide fades away from world memory
While the Turks are celebrating the conversion of the ancient Hagia Sophia church into a mosque and the British debating whether 20-year-old Islamic State (ISIS) bride Shamima Begum should be allowed back in Britain, the genocide of the Yazidis from the same region almost lies forgotten. August 3 marks the sixth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide when ISIS fighters swarmed Sinjar in 2014, in northwest Iraq on the Syria border, and began their senseless slaughter of this ancient ethnic group of people. While the men and boys were killed, the girls and women were kidnapped, raped, sold and re-sold. The ISIS campaign against the Yazidis in August 2014 led to the killing of nearly 5,000 men and the kidnapping of 7,000 girls and women—some as young as nine—for sexual slavery. The rampaging ISIS fighters destroyed Yazidi homes and villages with a view to completely wiping out one of the most persecuted minority groups in the world. The large Iraqi force safeguarding northern Iraq fled onc