President Barzani congratulates Yazidi festival of fasting

ERBIL (Kurdistan Region) - The President of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani congratulated the Yazidi Kurds on Thursday for the occasion of the annual mid-December festival of fasting (Cejna rojîyê) also known as "the Festival of Ezidi."

President Barzani in a statement released on the Kurdistan Region Presidency website said that the liberation of the Yazidi town of Shingal (Sinjar) in the Northern Iraqi province of Nineveh in November was a gift from the Peshmerga to "our Yazidi brothers and sisters in Kurdistan and everywhere in the world." In August 2014, the Yazidi-Kurdish town of Shingal was captured by the Islamic State militants who outnumbered and outgunned the Kurdish forces protecting the area.

Barzani in his congratulatory message to the Yazidi Kurds said that Shingal is “a symbol of coexistence in Kurdistan” and reiterated his promise to make the Yazidi-majority Shingal area an independent province.

Approximately half a million Yazidi Kurds live in Iraqi Kurdistan and other parts of the Greater Kurdistan.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) also congratulated the Yazidi festival of fasting that lasts for three days and ends with a day of celebrations just before the winter solstice. The KRG Cabinet stated in a statement on its website that this year's festival on Friday comes more than a year after the pain and genocide inflicted on the Yazidis by the Islamic State militants. Thousands of Yazidi men were killed when given the choice of convert or die, women and children were taken as spoils of war and enslaved by the Islamist militants. The statement said, "we hope next year's festival will be the festival of the liberation of all Yazidi areas, lands of Kurdistan, and especially that of the brothers and sisters still in the hands of ISIS terrorists."

The KRG called on the displaced Yazidis not to leave "the homeland for foreign lands” because the Yazidis and their religion can "only be protected in Kurdistan and the Holy Lalish," the village where the main temple of Yazidis is located, some 50 kilometers south of the city of Duhok.

Meanwhile, the German President Joachim Gauck congratulated German Yazidis, on the presidency website on Friday and said "the cruel persecution of many of your faith in the Middle East clouded the festival.” President Gauck said he wished for peace and security for all the members of Yazidi faith.