Where Is The Outrage? Where Is The Concern? Yazidi Life From Their Homes To A Refugee Camp

For Yazidis, Christians: ‘They Cut Us Like Sheep’ (Video)

By Chris Mitchell August 25, 2014 , 10:13 am

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“For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.” (Psalm 27:5)

Yazidi children and families rest and shelter from the sun at Nawrouz refugee camp. (Photo: UNICEF Syria/2014/Razan Rashidi)

UN BAJID KANDALA REFUGEE CAMP, Northern Iraq — It looks like a scene out of the Bible — a modern-day exodus.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis made the 100-mile trek from Mt. Sinjar all the way to the United Nations refugee camp on the northern border.

For some, it was a two-, three- or even four-day journey. Most of them came with just the clothes on their back.

Out of the multitude, each one has a story.

When ISIS, the Islamic State, attacked Sinjar, home to most of the Yazidis, Guli Udayda — a name that means “God giveth” — said it felt like the end of the world.

“When they [ISIS terrorists] came, they caught some people and kidnapped beautiful girls and took them away,” Udayda told CBN News. “We escaped. The ones that stayed ISIS killed.”

When they reached Mt. Sinjar, her son went back for food. ISIS captured him, shot him, gouged out his eyes, and beheaded him. His friend buried him.

The long mountain trek had its own horrors. Fluce Khadr Anun used a cap from a medicine bottle to keep her children alive.

“I gave my children a drop of water every hour. The water was very far away,” Anun told CBN News.

The Yazidis who escaped from Mount Sinjar walked some 100 miles through the desert before reaching a desert road. They crossed the Tigris River and kept walking up the road on the other side till they reached the U.N. camp.

Khadr Anun arrived just one hour before CBN News talked with him.

“We are in a desperate situation,” he said. “We don’t have any hope. We don’t have any salvation. I’m tired and I just want to get some sleep.”

Twelve-year-old boys, like Tasim and Rezyen, saw things that are likely to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Rezyen remembers the mountain.

“Many kids died on the mountain because there was no water,” Rezyen said. “We escaped from ISIS because they wanted us to convert to Islam or be killed.”

“I was there when ISIS came and shot one girl with a bullet in the head because they told her to convert. She refused and they killed her,” Tasim recalled.

When you go from a home to a refugee camp within days, how do you deal with 120-degree heat while all the time knowing winter is on its way?

“We are sleeping on the ground. The rain is coming and we don’t know what we are going to do. We have no future,” Tasim said.

“Here in the Middle East, the Christians and the Yazidis, they cut us like sheep. There is no mercy for us,” another refugee told CBN News.

The plight of the Yazidis reminded our translator, Ahmed, of when he became a refugee after fleeing from Sadaam Hussein in 1991.

“It’s not easy to explain,” Ahmed said. “You can see, as you see. It’s horrible man.”

In the tent city, life goes on. An elderly woman makes tea for her family. Young children play a game with bottle caps. The U.N. supplies water. It’s a refuge, but not a home.

The war-weary faces of the Yazidis reflect a horrific past, a precarious present, and an uncertain future. Sometimes it spills over and the tears flow. Many of these refugees don’t want to see Iraq anymore.

“We wait for the mercy of God and people like you to be protected from the evil men,” Guli said.

They’re also asking for the United States and the West to help.

“My request for all the believers in America and all over the world in all the church[es] [is] to pray for these people,” Guli said.

Originally published on CBN News

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/20554/yazidis-christians-cut-us-like-sheep-video/#EoixhLd4yDHLFDvu.99

Congressional Pressure Makes Obama Act To Save Christians In Iraq.

CONGRESSMAN TO OBAMA: 'YOUR CONSCIENCE WILL HAUNT YOU'

Blasts White House for doing nothing as Christians slaughtered, starved, raped

Published: 11 hours ago

 GREG COROMBOS About | Email | Archive

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The leading voice for human rights in Congress is blasting President Obama for doing nothing as Christians and other religious minorities face slaughter, starvation, rape and other atrocities at the hands of the al-Qaida branch known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said the evidence is clear that ISIS is on a murderous rampage throughout parts of Iraq and Syria and action is needed urgently.

“It’s very dire. The administration has known this, and they’ve done nothing. In fact, the president put together a genocide prevention board back in April 2012. Well, genocide is taking place. This meets the test of genocide against an ethnic group,” Wolf said. “The ethnic group are the Christians. The ethnic group are the Yazidis. It also is a crime against humanity, which meets the whole U.N. test. Yet, the administration has watched this and done fundamentally nothing.

“We’re saying do something. Act. Act. Act. People are without food. They’re without lodging. They’re without medicine.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.:

Reports from aid groups and others in the region depict horrors on a grand scale aimed at Christians and others. Another group in great peril are the Yazidis, a sect with ties to Zoroastrianism and other religious traditions. Wolf contends some 200,000 Yazidis were forced to flee their homes. Tens of thousands of them sought refuge on Mt. Sinjar without provisions and with summertime temperatures soaring far above 100 degrees.

Nina Shea is an international human rights attorney and Christian religious freedom advocate with the Hudson Institute. In a piece written for National Review Online, she cited a shocking report from the Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq.

“Yesterday 45 children died of thirst. Some families throw their children from the top of Sinjar mountain in order not to see them die from hunger or thirst, or not to be taken by the terrorists. 1,500 men were killed in front of their wives and families, 50 old men died also from thirst and illness. More than 70 girl and women including Christians were taken, raped and being captured and sold,” the group reported.

Chaldean Christians are also a major target for ISIS in northern Iraq. Businessman Mark Arabo detailed the grisly atrocities for CNN.

“There is a park in Mosul where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park,” Arabo told the cable channel. “More children are getting beheaded, mothers are getting raped and killed and fathers are being hung [sic].”

ISIS is reportedly making considerable military progress and seems to have captured a critical river dam near Mosul that controls much of the water supply to a wide area. All of this is even more frustrating when considering ISIS is making this advance largely with American-made tools of war that were abandoned by the Iraqis.

“They have Humvees. They have automatic weapons. I heard they even have Black Hawk helicopters. I’m not sure they know how to fly them,” Wolf said. “But it is basically a nation-state now that you’re faced with and they have a lot of money.”

Rep. Wolf said strong leaders don’t just sit back and allow these kinds of horrors to proceed.

“The administration says they’re going to lead from behind, which means they’re going to follow,” he said. “I don’t know that I could tell you why they’re not acting. I think if we had somebody like President Reagan or President Truman, they would act. They would do something. We’re not talking about military activity. There’s a lot of things that can be done with regard to that, but the Christian community is waiting for someone to help them.

“I think the president has to speak out. I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, ‘You understand the silence of your enemies but you don’t understand the silence of your friends.’ I think the president has to speak out,” he said.

The congressman said ISIS needs to be confronted now or its agenda could succeed “all the way.” He said the immediate threat ISIS poses to the U.S. and its allies is much greater than many realize.

“Some of them are going to come to the United States perhaps,” Wolf said. “There are over 115 Americans with American passports that are fighting with ISIS, Americans who could fly back into the United States. There’ll be nothing on where they were, and they won’t say where they’ve been. They fly to Turkey. From Turkey they go south, and they joined ISIS. You have almost 2,000-3,000 western Europeans with British passports, French passports. They could fly here to the United States.”

So what could or should the Obama administration be doing?

“There [is] a number of things the U.S. could do. One, thank the Kurds for defending the Christians and the Yazidis and urge them to continue to do it. Two, help with some of the foreign aid. Re-program money, giving some to Catholic Relief, World Vision, Save the Children to bring the basic necessities there. Three, allow the Kurds to sell their oil,” Wolf said.

“This administration has a ship in the Galveston harbor. They won’t let it unload, because they say the oil belongs to the Maliki government in Baghdad. If the Kurds can’t sell the oil, they can’t have any supplies. They can’t defend anybody and the last couple days, the Kurdish military have been withdrawing. As a result of that, you see what’s taking place yesterday and again today.”

In addition to the obvious humanitarian crisis, Wolf said a tremendous amount of religious history for Christians and others is threatened or already destroyed by ISIS.

“More biblical activity took place in Iraq than any other country in the world other than Israel. Abraham is from Iraq. Esther ‘for such a time like this,’ in Ninevah they blew up Jonah’s tomb over a week-and-a-half ago in Mosul. Daniel, a great man of the Bible, is buried in Iraq. And yet, no one’s saying anything,” he said.

On Thursday, Wolf sent another letter to the White House, demanding action from the president.

“We cannot pretend these atrocities aren’t taking place; there are now videos on the Internet being promoted by those sympathetic to ISIS proudly displaying their brutal and grotesque slaughter and abuse of Christians, Yezidis and other religious minorities in Iraq,” he wrote.

“Your administration is aware of what is going on, yet you are doing nothing. Just what is the point of having an ‘Atrocities Prevention Board’ if it takes no action to prevent or stop atrocities? When was the last time this board has met? Has the board even been convened to address the genocide taking place in Iraq?” Wolf wrote.

He concluded, “It is now clear to the nation and the world that your words were hollow; your ‘presidential directive’ apparently was nothing more than a token gesture. You will come to sincerely regret your failure to take action to stop the genocide in Iraq. Your conscience will haunt you long after you leave office. Mr. President, say something; do something.”