Category Archives: Refugees

$100 Goes a Long Way in an Ezidi Refugee Camp

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Dear Barbara and Alan, Yesterday I spent my birthday in the Sirnak Ezidi refugee commune.  Here’s how I spent your latest $100 donation.  I bought the last 12 stove-top electric burners in Sirnak at a cost of $4.45 dollars each for a total of $54 dollars.  The shop owner discounted…

Adib’s Story: An Ezidi Woman Who Escaped the Islamic State

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: “I used to have a nice life until Daash attacked us in Shingal,” explains 20-year-old Adib Khudeda Qasem.  The Islamic State (also referred to as IS, ISIS, ISID, ISIL)  is called “Daash” in Iraq. “Now our life is finished,” adds her younger brother. Adib is now living with 32 of…

Genocide: 10 Reasons Why Ezidis Refuse to Return to Shingal

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Since Sept 3, 2014, Dr. Amy L. Beam has visited with hundreds of Ezidis in 12 refugee camps in Turkey.   While camp directors and international media continue to say the Ezidis will return to Shingal “when it is safe,” she has not found one Ezidi refugee who agrees.  To the…

Games that are a playing – Lives that are a living

By Shenah Abdullah:  “It’s no use for the world talking about me and my people when I still have to wake up the next morning worrying about my sons and daughters missing and how to comfort their children. Everyone is responsible. What can you do to comfort my burning heart?” Words of a grandmother who…

Sirnak Saves Yezidi Refugees without Ankara’s Help

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: “I watched Daash (Islamic State terrorists) kill my son. Three men with long swords chopped him across the back of his neck.  I have two sons and eight daughters.  We were trapped on Sinjar Mountain with no food or water.  On the third day, my eldest son, Said Namer (age…

Appeal to President Obama: Extend your humanitarian and military support to Syria’s Kurds

By Dr.Amir Sharifi: Sign the Petition Dear President Obama As Kurdish Americans with great gratitude we welcome your initiative to respond to the threat of Islamic State in Iraq, Kurdistan region, and Syria.  As you have rightfully noted Islamic State is the greatest threat that our world faces and hence requires a global response. Mr. President, we…

Conditions in 11 Yezidi Refugee Camps in Turkey

By Amy L. Beam: Between Sept. 3 – 14, I visited the Yezidi refugees in their camps from Roboski to Diyarbakir.  Yezidis fled from Shengal, Iraq, when Islamic State forces attacked them on August 3-4.   There was a population between 700,000 and one million Yezidis living in the Shengal region in northeast Iraq on the…

Yezidis Beg for United Nations Help in Diyarbakir

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: On Sept. 15, I got an urgent call from an Yezidi in the Diyarbakir Shengal refugee camp.  He reported their situation is dire without enough food, and he begged me to come there and tell the world of their plight.  There are 4,500 Yezidis camping under open skies in Fidanlik…

PKK Refused Money from Yezidis Fleeing ISIS

By Amy L Beam: An estimated 25,000 Yezidi refugees fleeing the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) attack of their homeland in Shengal, Iraq, have fled through the mountains to Roboski, Turkey (North Kurdistan).   They have been sheltered and fed by Kurds from Roboski north to Diyarbakir and west to Mardin. I have visited ten Yezidi…

Invitation to Safety Brings Hardship to Kurdish Population

Rauf Naqishbendi

By Rauf Naqishbendi: Since June of this calendar year when the outburst of the Islamist Caliphate commenced, the influx of refugees from areas taken over by these Islamist thugs were outpouring into Kurdistan region of Iraq. Kurdish leaders naively inviting these people to converge into towns, cities and villages of Kurdistan; and to blend with population…

Traumatized Ezidis Share Tragic Stories at Hilal School in North Kurdistan

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: I was planning on attending a wedding, not a funeral, this week in the village of Hilal. A Kurdish wedding is a grand, carnival-like, three-day community event with outdoor music, dancing, and eating from morning ’til midnight.  But the wedding was cancelled. It would be an affront to flaunt a…

Roboski: How a village of 1200 saved 20,000 Ezidi refugees with help of PKK

By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: “If it were not for the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) helping us all along the way, there would not be one Ezidi left alive today.”  This was the same litany I heard repeated from dozens of refugees in camps in Roboski, Hilal, and Şirnak, in North Kurdistan (southeast Turkey). When…

Meeting between Yezidi leaders and representa​tives of the KRG

 By Telim Tolan: On behalf of General Qasim Shesho, commander of the Yezidi Defense Forces at sanctuary Sherfedin and accompanied by Hasim Mir Tashin Beg, son of the secular leader of all Yezidis, Mir Tashin Beg, Telim Tolan, leader of the Central Council of Yezidis in Germany, has met today with representatives of the Kurdistan…

Psychological impacts on Yezidis

By Bnar Jalal Ali: Mount Sinjar, for the 37th time, was the savior of Yezidis when more than 20,000 from Sinjar fled there after ISIS militants took over the city, killing many and kidnapping hundreds of women. Yezidis fled in bare feet, many dying from hunger and dehydration under the burning sun. The scenes from…

Yezidi Task Force reports dramatic situation in refugee camps: humanitarian disaster and ‘potential for mass suicides’

Press statement by the Central Council of Yezidis in Germany: Leader of the Central Council of Yezidis in Germany, Telim Tolan formed a task force with a delegation of doctors from the association “Kurdish Doctors in Germany” and a ZDF (German public TV station) camera team, travelling through the refugee camps in South Kurdistan since…