Four years after the ISIS the genocidal atrocities at Mount Shingal, displaced Yezidis gathered in Duhok on Friday for a ceremony to share their experiences and explain their plight through art, film, and on-stage performances.
The General Directorate of Martyr and Anfal Affairs in Duhok hosted the ceremony.
"We see the genocide in Shingal and want to bring attention to the world of the plight of the Yezidis," Ahmed Mishexti, the director of the event and a coordinator within the Duhok Culture Ministry, told Rudaw English.
"We believe that all people can live together peacefully in Kurdistan.”
Yezidis offered several performances on stage including music by Tahseen Shingaly, a play showing how ISIS destroyed the Yezidi people in Shingal when they first arrived, the showing of a documentary film, and an additional musical performance by Mohammed Zaki.
Several portraits were also put on display showing the Yezidis escape Mount Shingal. A "living" stone monument used people painted as stone and standing on platforms for people to view.
Several ISIS survivors were in attendance and spoke of their experiences.
One Yezidi female, Aenas Khero, who is now a Peshmerga, was only 14 years old when she was captured from Shingal.
She escaped after less than two months with ISIS but described in detail one of the many horrors she witnessed.
She told Rudaw of a young baby which was crying and a member of ISIS asked the baby's mother why the baby was crying, and the mother said he needed milk. The ISIS member told her to give him the baby and he'd find milk.
Instead, he beheaded the baby, cooked the baby and then forced the mother to eat her own child's flesh.
Khero became Peshmerga when she was 15 years old.
"I saw many women and girls captured and tortured by ISIS," she told Rudaw. "I became Peshmerga so that I can protect my people."
By A.C. Robinson
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