2019-09-16
ARBIL - In the summer of 2014, IS invaded the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of residents fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, or to Mount Sinjar, not knowing that help would come days later. Without food or water many died of exhaustion. But IS had come not only to expand the Caliphate, but also to eradicate the Yazidi, a community with its own religion and an ancient culture. Fate awaited residents who were locked down by IS. The men were killed; women and girls sold as slaves and boys were put in IS training camps.
Five years after the start of the genocide, little has changed for the Yazidi: due to political tensions, Sinjar is a now a abandoned area, IS members are not prosecuted for genocide and thousands of Yazidi are still missing. What is the future of a nation that has been struggling for centuries to survive?
Journalist Brenda Stoter Boscolo traveled to Iraq to write about the Yazidi. She soon discovered that the genocide is much more than the sex slavery on which the media mainly focused. In the refugee camps she researched the latest genocide, their history and culture and made close friendships. She followed the lives of Ismael, of whom thirty-five relatives were kidnapped, of Majdal, who was made a child soldier by IS, of Salem, who lost his entire family, and of Nadima, who became the mother of a child of an IS fighter...In a personal and penetrating way, she takes the reader into the world of victims who have all become the face of the genocide.
Supported
€ 9.450 allocated on 15/11/2018.ID
FPD/2018/1535Grant
BOOK (in Dutch)
- Editor: De Arbeiderspers
- NUR: 320
- Paperback
- ISBN: 9789029526463
- Price: € 24,99
- Publication date: 01-10-2019
IN THE PRESS (in Dutch)
- Brenda Stoter Boscolo schreef boek over Jezidi’s: ‘Een grote emotionele rollercoaster’, interview, Villamedia.nl, 16/09/2019.
- ‘Moeders houden van hun kind, zelfs als ze de vader dood wensen’, De Groene Amsterdammer, 02/10/2019.
- Hoe het gruwelijke verhaal van de Jezidi’s ondersneeuwde in de IS-storm, AD, 02/10/2019.
- Boek tekent extreem zware lijdensweg jezidi’s op, interview, Het Parool, 03/10/2019.
DEBATE
- Het Vergeten Volk, De verhalen en ervaringen van de Jezidi's, De Balie, Amsterdam, 7/10/2019.
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