Yezidis meet Sushma Swaraj, seek support at UN

NEW DELHI: A Yezidi delegation, including two women who were abducted by the Islamic State in Iraq when they were teenagers and made sex slaves, was here last week seeking India’s support for the community at the United Nations.

The delegation met foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and requested her support for their demand to the UN to be recognised as an indigenous community.

“We received a good audience from minister Swaraj. She is well versed with the genocide faced by Yezidis and acknowledges difficulties faced by our community,” Salem N Daoud, who heads the Yezidi North American Chapter and was one of the members of the delegation, told ET.


“We appealed to the Indian minister to support the Yezidi cause at the United Nations. We have little hope from the Abrahamic religions and we hoped that India understands our pain. Yezidis are also being targeted by Turks.

The Yezidis in Iraq were deliberately chosen by the ISIS with an eye on eliminating the minorities,” Daoud said. One of the women in the delegation was 16 when she was abducted by the ISIS, said Daoud.

The woman was brutally tortured and raped, and she gave birth to a baby boy in captivity, he said.

Yezidis, some of whose customs are akin to Hinduism and Persian and who follow a blend of Sufism and Sumerian customs, is today a small community primarily in Iraq and Syria.