Yazidi genocide: A rescue mission on Mount Sinjar

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Islamic State (IS) militants took control of Syria and Iraq in June 2014, the entire Yazidi population in Sinjar were immediately in grave danger. The Sunni Muslims of IS believed Yazidis were infidels and should either convert to Islam or be killed.

On 3 August 2014, 5,000 Yazidis were killed on the first day of the genocide. For those who survived that night, the only escape route was to climb Mount Sinjar in the blistering heat, with no shelter or food, and pray to be rescued.

Mirza Dinnayi convinced Iraq’s president to supply three helicopters and began evacuating 50,000 Yazidis, who were stranded on top of the mountain in a race against time. Mirza shares his experience with Sarah Ehrlich.

A 2 Degrees West production for BBC World Service.

(Photo: Yazidi people escape the Sinjar mountains in August 2014. Credit: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This was in a impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box.
0:05.0	The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from.
0:09.0	One of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.0	The IRA inmates who found a way.
0:14.4	I'm Carlo Gableer, and I'll be navigating a path through the disturbing inside story
0:21.5	of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history.
0:25.0	The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them.
0:28.5	Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	Hello, welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Sarah Elish.
0:45.1	This is the story of a remarkable rescue mission.
0:48.3	I'm taking you back to 2014.
0:51.3	It's scorchingly hot in the Xinjar region of northern Iraq, home to the peaceful Yazidi community for millennia, but militants from the Islamic State group, or IS, are violently sweeping through Syria taking control.
1:06.1	They're heading for Iraq, their goal to destroy its half a million Yazidis,
1:11.6	erasing their history and their religion.
1:14.7	I tried to breathe and wasn't possible.
1:19.2	And in this moment my life became just like a video film before my eyes. I didn't believe that there are these five
1:27.6	stages of death, but I saw all these stages. That's our witness, Mirza and I talking about his experience of a rescue
1:36.8	mission that went tragically wrong. But first, who are the Yazidis? Until the 12th class, I was grown up in Hanasaurinsinger.
1:49.0	Yazidi people is an ancient monotheistic religion that goes back more than 5,000 years.
1:57.0	Our grandfathers, they were believing that son is the God since Prophet Abraham. don't we say Sun is the light of the god and there is one
2:08.2	God called Hade or Ezehadee means the one who created himself.
2:14.0	Yizidis are also one of the most persecuted groups,
	...

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