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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…
By Amy L Beam, Ed.D: Today’s Zaman, on August 11, 2014, reported that 6 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members have escaped from the PKK and entered into Turkey at the Harbur border gate where they “turned themselves in”. One might reasonably infer that they were arrested when their identities where cross-referenced by Turkish Immigration authorities…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: The widow and daughters of the Ezidi Progress Party leader, Waad Hamad Mato (DoB 1967), arrived in Paris December 20, 2018, after four years of being rejected for asylum by other countries. They were on the first plane of 20 Yezidi families promised asylum by French President Macron in response…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Human rights advocate and author of forthcoming book “The Last Yezidi Genocide”; Founder and Executive Director, AAJ humanitarian organization in Kurdistan, Iraq The Yezidis are a non-Muslim religious minority who were brutally attacked in Shengal, Iraq, by the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) on August 3 and 15, 2014. The…
By Amy L. Beam: ISIS (Daesh or Islamic State) recently released another propaganda video with the intent to inflict maximum pain to Yezidis. In the video are two Yezidi boys who were allegedly used as suicide bombers. The boys denounce their parents and Yezidis as infidels. They state they would explode themselves among the infidels….
By Amy L. Beam: CONUNDRUM: a dilemma without a solution. Since the genocidal attack by Daesh (Islamic State) upon Yezidis in August 2014, I have asked every Yezidi whom I meet what he or she thinks is the solution for their future in Shengal. Their demoralized answer is unanimous: “There is no solution. Shengal can’t…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Nadia Murad’s mother and six of her brothers were shot and killed in mass executions when ISIS attacked her village of Kocho, Shingal, Iraq, August 15, 2014. The wife and child of her brother who survived six bullet wounds are still missing. Twenty-four-year-old Nadia Murad escaped her torturers. Between 9,000…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Salwa Khalaf Rasho, an 18-year-old Yezidi who escaped Islamic State captivity after eight months, met today in London in several private meetings to plead for help in rescuing over 3100 Yezidis still kidnapped by ISIS. She was accompanied to the meetings with activists Jemal Bailoz Shaveshyan, Dr. Amy L. Beam,…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Nayf’s Journey At daybreak, December 8, one of my Yazidi translators, Nayf, landed safely in the Greek Island of Chios in a rubber boat with his fiancée and her family of six. This was their second attempt after failing to make it to Kos Island from Bodrum last week. They…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: In the afternoon of November 25, 2015, a clash over the ownership of sheep resulted in the death of two Yazidi Peshmerga and reportedly a Kurdish truck driver on the south side of Mount Sinjar (also called Shingal in Kurdish), just north of Shingal city. Leading up to this incident…
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D.: British journalist Jacky Sutton, 50, travelled from London Heathrow to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Saturday night, October 17, but failed to make it onto her next plane to Erbil in Kurdistan, Iraq. According to local media, she was told by airport personnel that she would have to buy a new…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Nusaybin in southeast Turkey has been under siege from Turkish police. Inside of the city of Nusaybin (with many Kurdish residents), no one is allowed to leave his or her house. Even staying inside one’s house, no one can look out of a window for fear of being shot by…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: I, Amy L. Beam, am an American human rights activist, researcher and writer. Since the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, IS) attack on Shingal, Iraq, on August 3, 2014, in which over 9,000 Yezidis were killed, kidnapped, or sexually enslaved, I have visited all the Kurdish-run Yezidi refugee camps in…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: On July 25, 2015, Turkey launched simultaneous missile attacks into Syria against Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) targets and into Qandil, Kurdistan, against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who have been the leading force fighting ISIS. Turkey stated its attack in the Qandil region was to destroy arms and munitions storage…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: MONEY Many people want to help the Yezidi people who were viciously attacked, slaughtered, and kidnapped last August in Shingal, Iraq, but they do not know who to trust with a donation. I have sat in the tents and one-room container homes of many Yezidi women who have escaped from…
