Zentralrat der Eziden in Deutschland and European Syriac Union Honor Yazidi Genocide Victims

GIESSEN, GERMANY — Condemnations and commemorations marking the genocide committed against the Yazidi people on August 3, 2014, were not confined to official state actors. Numerous political parties, both within Iraq and internationally, issued statements denouncing the atrocity.  

Members of the Yazidi community. organized in the Zentralrat der Eziden in Deutschland, Germany, held a commemoration in the city of Giessen, State of Hessen, on Sunday, August 3, 2025, to mark the eleventh anniversary of the genocide targeting the Yazidis in Shigur (Sinjar), northern Iraq. The event was attended by a delegation from the Beth Nahrin Women’s Union, led by local official Merame Budak, European Syriac Union representative Benjamin Budak, the Yazidi community, and prominent figures from various German political parties. Also in attendance were representatives of the Kurdish, Alawite, and Turkish communities in Germany, as well as the Turkish Consul. 

Dr. Irfan Ortac of the Zentralrat der Eziden in Deutschland welcomed the guests and spoke about the need for recognition of the Yazidi Genocide. He emphasized the right to freedom for Yazidis in their homeland. 

Several speeches followed, including an address by Benjamin Budak on behalf of the European Syriac Union. The speakers unequivocally condemned the genocidal crimes committed by ISIS terrorists against the Yazidi people and other communities in Sinjar in 2014. They underscored the urgent need for international recognition of these atrocities as acts of genocide.

Benjamin Budak of the ESU reflected on the tragic events of August 2014 and stressed that the horrific acts of ISIS against the Yazidis, one of the oldest people in the Middle East, unequivocally constitute genocide under international law. “This genocide has not only severely affected the Yazidis but shocked the moral consciousness of humanity as a whole.” On behalf of the European Syriac Union, he expressed his unequivocal condemnation of the genocide, making it clear that “the Yazidi community does not stand alone.”  

Budak drew a comparison with the genocide of Christians in in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire by the hands of Turks and Kurds. He also explained how ISIS targeted the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian villages and towns in the Nineveh Plains on August 6, 2014—only three days after the start of the Yazidi genocide. ISIS plundered houses, destroyed churches and monasteries, kidnapped clergy, and caused tens of thousands Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians to flee.

“These acts against humanity have not only bound our fates together—they have turned our collective suffering into a collective testimony.” 

In the name of the European Syriac Union, he called on the international community to hold ISIS perpetrators and those complicit in the genocide accountable in international courts and urged immediate action to uncover the fate of the missing Yazidi women and children, and to implement long-term rehabilitation and support programs for survivors.  

He further called for the establishment of an international reconstruction fund for Shigur (Sinjar), to facilitate the safe and dignified return of Yazidis to their ancestral lands; advocated for the creation of a self-administration and defense mechanism to protect Yazidi identity, heritage, and faith. Finally, he called for the right to self-determination and self-government for all peoples in the Middle East.