Motion by Ampel and Union: Bundestag wants to recognize genocide of Yazidis

The Bundestag wants to recognize the IS massacre of the Yazidis in 2014 as genocide. The traffic light groups and the Union have agreed on a corresponding application. He suits him ARD Capital Studio Before.

It is August 2014 when Firat Ortac in Berlin begs the world for help. “Since Sunday morning we have been screaming at the world and asking the world to save these people.” By then, the IS terrorists had already started killing in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. The Foreign Minister at the time, Sigmar Gabriel, had an inkling of what was happening there: “This is the preparation for a genocide. It’s about nothing else. The cultural community of the Yazidis is to be eradicated there.”

The world knew it, but still failed people like young Yazidis Hakeema Taha. She lived in what was then Kojo, the place that became an epicenter of the killings. “They divided us up. The men were taken away and killed,” she hesitantly told the Bundestag’s human rights committee. Older women were killed. Young women and girls were enslaved, raped, sold. The boys were put in Koran schools, used as suicide bombers and child soldiers for IS.

Düzen Tekkal founded a human rights organization and is the voice and lawyer of the Yazidis. “They murdered almost all the men in Kodjo. Laid them on top of each other like in a mass execution and shot them,” the activist told the Bundestag’s human rights committee. She is grateful that Germany is finally recognizing the genocide. “Kojo no longer exists. Kojo is a synonym for genocide. A place of darkness.”

“Monsters of War”

According to Max Lucks, who, as a member of the Bundestag for the Greens, helped ensure that it was recognized as genocide, Yazidi life should be protected everywhere. “Experienced trauma, the constant fear of not living in safety, the feeling that the world is not looking at the humanitarian situation of the Yazidis – with our initiative we want to draw a line under this,” Lucks said ARD Capital Studio.

Düzen Tekkal says you don’t have to use wars from the past to draw the monster of war. “Kojo is his own monster.”

In the draft proposal of the four factions, the monster now gets names and faces. “It was long overdue that the unculture of silence was ended. In view of our own past, it is our duty to clearly identify crimes against humanity, regardless of where they are committed,” said the FDP rapporteur on the Human Rights Committee, Peter Heidt .

More than 5,000 people were killed, 7,000 abducted and hundreds of thousands displaced. They are still holding out in the mountains of Kurdistan to this day. “They are accusers of genocide because their cries for help are echoed in the mountains,” Tekkal describes it.

Application with 20 points

The four parliamentary groups want to change that with the recognition of the genocide. The application contains 20 points. Including more aid money. But also the promise of a legal investigation and the prosecution of the perpetrators. 300,000 refugees should be able to return to their homes in the Sinjar region. The situation in the camps is desolate, the people are tired and desperate.

The parliamentary groups mention the suicides of many refugees due to the hopelessness of their situation. The victims should therefore continue to receive protection in the context of asylum procedures. The human rights activist Tekkal appeals not only to recognize the genocide, but also to support the courageous women. To create special quotas for recordings of the victims together with their children, some of whom were the result of rapes.

A verdict as a milestone

In the legal field, Germany has been a global pioneer since November 30, 2021 at the latest. At that time, the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court had recognized genocide for the first time in a judgment against an IS fighter. A dam break. Political scientist Tekkal speaks of a milestone that Germany can be proud of.

The Yazidi Gohdar Alkaidy once submitted the petition for the recognition of the genocide to the Bundestag’s Petitions Committee. He is now counting on the fact that after the trauma of the victims, the nightmare of the perpetrators will now begin. “We Yazidis trust in Germany. That the perpetrators are right to fear and that we Yazidis can hope.”

Hundreds of Germans also fought for the IS at the time. Firat Ortac, who begged the world for help in 2014, once said that many of the perpetrators now live unmolested in Germany.

Mass graves are still being discovered

The four parliamentary groups therefore also speak of Germany’s responsibility to prosecute the perpetrators under the International Criminal Code. “On the basis of universal jurisdiction, criminal prosecution is possible and should be supported regardless of nationality,” the draft says. With the largest Yazidi diaspora in the world, Germany has a “special responsibility” here, according to Michael Brand, chairman of the working group on human rights in the Union faction.

Genocide continues to be pervasive in Iraq. Mass graves are still being discovered. More than 2700 family members are still missing. At that time, more than 400 men died in Kodjo, 1,250 women and children were kidnapped, pregnant women and the elderly were killed. Hundreds of graves were left with the names of the victims. But many are still buried nameless in mass graves.

This is one of the reasons why action has now been taken, says SPD member of the Bundestag Derya Türk-Nachbaur. “We can only speak of justice when the victims are buried and the murderers are punished and when the whereabouts of the missing people are clear.” By the way, one of the survivors from Kojo is Nadia Murad. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 because she campaigned as a human rights activist for the fate of women in particular.