Union of Syrian Yezidis denounces chief mercenary visiting Basofan Yazidi village

The statement considered Hariri's visit a provocative one aimed at confirming the demographic change processes in Afrin canton and the Yazidi villages.

"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 take control of Afrin if it did not destroy the Kurdish culture in general, and the Yazidis in particular; Turkey gave the green light to the militant factions by destroying the shrines of the Yazidis. Turkish tanks, several factions of the Syrian Coalition, rushed to destroy the headquarters of the Yezidis Cultural and Social Association in Afrin, and the militants continued to destroy the shrines of the villages of Qibar, Taranda and Shader, and the last shrines they destroyed was the shrine of Sheikh Ali in the village of Basofan.

"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 instead of them to teach the Islamic religion, opened mosques in Yazidi villages, and imposed on Yazidi women to wear Islamic dress," the statement said. The hardliners tried to force the Yazidis to convert to Islam, and the first person to kill him in cold blood was the martyr Omar Mammo from the Yazidi village of Qibar, who refused to utter the two declaration of faith, 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 of this was taking place before the eyes of the Syrian coalition and the Turkish state without moving to put an end to the violations of their militant factions. Rather, the coalition and the Turkish occupation army were turning a blind eye to all of these punishments that they are carrying out, until the Yazidis live in terror for fear of violating their dignity.”

"The majority of them rushed to pay huge sums to leave their villages, as the militants were opening the way for the Yazidis to leave their homes to accommodate settlers instead of them, until only some elderly people remained in the Yazidi villages. For example: the village of Basofan, the number of Yazidis before the revolution was about three thousand people Now, there are only 200 people left, most of them elderly.

"After all this, and after the media exposed those violations and abuses of the Turkish occupier and the militant factions of the Syrian Coalition, the head of the Syrian coalition, Nasr Al-Hariri, comes to the Yazidi villages (accompanied by a large number of armed militants who sow terror in the hearts of the remaining Yezidis), the statement continued. An attempt by him to polish the image of his army, and to bleach the face of his militant factions, forgetting that every faction of his army headed by ISIS fled Mosul and Sengal, and forgetting that those before entering Afrin were screaming: We are coming, Yazidis, and we will investigate in Afrin what we were unable to achieve in Şengal.

The statement concluded, "We in the Union of the Syrian Yezidis condemn Hariri's visit to the Yazidi village of Basofan and the rest of Afrin, and we consider it a provocative visit whose first goal is to ensure that his plan and Turkey's plan to bring about demographic change are going according to what they planned, and to ensure that their armed men continue to terrorize the indigenous population." We call on human rights organizations and the countries concerned to pressure Turkey to withdraw its forces, factions and settlers supported by it from all of Syria, so that the displaced people who were forcibly displaced by Turkey would return to their villages and properties, end their suffering, and compensate the affected with fair compensation.

J.O

ANHA