The Yazidi community in northern Iraq on Saturday buried 104 victims of a massacre carried out by Islamic State militants.

The Yazidis are a national minority, ethnically related to the Kurds, but retaining an ancient pre-Islamic religion. The IS offensive in northern Iraq in 2014 ended in a mass massacre of Yazidis-men were killed, and children and women were taken into captivity and sexual slavery. Thousands of Yazidis have fallen victim to the jihadist occupation of Iraq. The UN recognized these events as genocide.

One of the victims of this invasion was Nadia Murad, who was taken prisoner at the age of 21. She was able to escape after three months of being raped and beaten. Murad is now working to ensure that these crimes and victims of sexual violence during the war are not forgotten.

This activity earned her the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded by the European Parliament. The identification of the remains from the graves of Yazidis left at the site of the mass killings continues.

This week, the identified bodies of 104 men were interred in the village of Kocho near Mount Sinjar, sacred to the Yazidis. All of them were killed by IS militants in 2014, says the head of the Yazidi group documenting the massacre, Khairi Ali Ibrahim.

After the capture of this village by the jihadists, the men were offered a choice: convert to Islam or die, Yazidi activists in exile reported. On Thursday, a farewell to the dead was held at the monument to the unknown soldier in Baghdad. After that, there remains were transported to their native village. Each coffin, wrapped in an Iraqi flag, was decorated with a photograph of the deceased. " This is the first step in paying tribute to the victims, but compensation for other victims, women and children who survived the genocide should be part of the transitional justice, " said Mirza Dinnai, a Yazidi human rights activist.

Transitional justice is a set of practices for reconciliation and justice restoration in addition to the traditional judicial system. It is used in countries that have experienced massive violations of human rights - the most famous example is the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa. "I hope that we can do much more to protect the Yazidis so that this does not happen again in the future," Dinnai said.

The Yazidi religion combines elements of ancient Iranian beliefs and aspects of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. In the eyes of the IS militants, who profess a radical version of Sunni Islam, they are pagans, and this has led to mass persecution after the jihadists seized their lands. Of the 550,000 Yazidis who lived in Iraq before 2014, about 360,000 left the country and became refugees.

In Frankfurt, Germany, in April last year, a 37-year-old man, whom prosecutors believe to be a former high-ranking ISIS militant, appeared in the dock.

He is accused of genocide, murder, and human trafficking - according to the prosecution, he stole a Yazidi woman and her five-year-old daughter into slavery.

Source – BBC.com