Canada to shelter 1,200 Ezidis, spend $28 million

OTTAWA, Canada (Kurdistan24) – Some 1,200 Yezidis (Ezidis) fleeing the Islamic State (IS) are to be housed in Canada by the end of 2017, the Canadian government announced on Tuesday.

The initiative is expected to cost $28 million dollars.

Canada has already accepted nearly 400 Ezidis in the past few months, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said while announcing the initiative.

Their entrance into Canada will not be publically announced, unlike that of Syrian refugees whose welcome was televised across the country.

Hussen added because the newly accepted refugees were extremely vulnerable, the Canadian government would seek to protect their identity.

“Some of these women haven’t even told their own families about what they experienced” at the hands of their persecutors, Associate Assistant Deputy Immigration Minister Dawn Edlund told a news conference alongside Hussen.

Ezidis are called people of 72 genocides. They originated from northern Iraq and eastern Turkey but were pushed out during the Ottoman Empire.

They are wrongly labeled “devil-worshippers” and “infidels,” and have been attacked for their beliefs repeatedly throughout history.

After IS’ emergence in Iraq in 2014, the insurgent group sought to exterminate the Ezidi population in the country.

In August 2014, IS attacked their hometown of Sinjar (Shingal) in the Kurdistan Region, killing, kidnapping, torturing Ezidis, and taking women as sex slaves.

Nearly 5,000 Ezidi men, women, and children were massacred by IS militants in Shingal.

Last March, identified mass graves of Ezidis in and around the city of Shingal were excavated.

The Kurdistan Region’s Higher Committee for Recognizing Ezidi Genocide has identified 25 mass graves to date.

According to the committee, these mass graves contain approximately 1,300 bodies.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany