Yazidi genocide: No justice without accountability of the perpetrators

This article was originally published in German by WELT on January 20, 2023. The original can be found here.

By Alfred Hackensberger WELT correspondent for war and crisis areas

In August 2014, thousands of Yazidis fled across the Syrian border into the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The so-called Islamic State (IS) had invaded the Yazidis’ homeland to eradicate one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities. The IS fighters, including many German nationals, killed 12,000 Yazidis and kidnapped about 7,000 young women and girls to hold them as slaves for labor and sex. 400,000 Yazidis had to flee their homeland.

The United Nations and the EU Parliament have already recognized the crimes as genocide. Now the German parliament has followed suit, although much too late. The approximately 200,000 Yazidis in Germany can now feel some satisfaction. But not much more. The parliamentary groups of the SPD, CDU/CSU, FDP, and the Greens tabled the motion jointly. Fortunately, it makes reference to the situation of the Yazidis, which is still miserable eight years after the IS attack.

Most refugees still live in container camps. And far from all abducted Yazidi women receive adequate therapeutic counseling and assistance. More than 2,700 women are still reported missing. In some cases, their ordeal continues in countries such as Turkey, Libya and Saudi Arabia. And then there are the children resulting from the rapes. The Yazidi community does not recognize the IS offspring and sends them to orphanages.

However, merely listing the problems does little good. It may bring some attention, but the German federal government could set a real example, i.e., it could hold the perpetrators accountable. In fact, Germany is already taking a pioneering lead in this. German courts can – and already have – convict IS perpetrators under the principle of international law for international crimes.

Until now, convicts were mostly Islamic State women. Their husbands are in prison in northern Syria, and the German government does not want to repatriate them to Germany. Yet it is these German IS fighters who helped drive out and kill the Yazidis. They raped Yazidi women, bought and sold them as slaves or simply watched as the brutality happened.

If the recognition of the Yazidi genocide is not to remain just a gesture of sympathy, the repatriation of the German IS prisoners would be a major step of action. For the victims, there is no justice without accountability of the perpetrators.

Alfred Hackensberger is correspondent for WELT. You can follow him via Twitter @hackensberger and on his blog.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.

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