{"id":36677,"date":"2019-03-21T23:24:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T23:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36677"},"modified":"2019-03-21T23:24:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T23:24:33","slug":"france-urges-iran-to-free-human-rights-lawyer-nasrin-sotoudeh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36677","title":{"rendered":"France urges Iran to free human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nSINJAR:\u00a0For decades, his land was his life. Now, like other Sunni Arab farmers in Iraq\u2019s diverse north, Mahdi Abu Enad is cut off from his fields, fearing reprisal attacks.<\/p>\n

\nHe hails from the mountainous region of Sinjar, which borders Syria and is home to an array of communities \u2014 Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Yazidis.<\/p>\n

\nThat patchwork was ripped apart when Daesh rampaged across the area in 2014, and has not reconciled even long after Iraqi forces ousted IS in 2017.<\/p>\n

\nYazidis, whose men Daesh killed en masse and whose women and girls were enslaved by the group, say they have suffered the most.<\/p>\n

\nThey accuse their Sunni Arab neighbors of granting the extremists of Daesh a foothold in Sinjar.<\/p>\n

\nDisplaced Sunni Arabs, on the other hand, slam the sweeping accusation as unfair and say looting and the threat of retaliatory violence have kept them from coming home.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe stand accused of belonging to IS (Daesh) because they settled in Sunni areas, but IS doesn\u2019t represent Sunnis,\u201d said Abu Enad, displaced from his hometown to Al-Baaj since 2014.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe all lost our livelihoods. It\u2019s been four years since we cultivated our land because we fear for our lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nIn 2017, Human Rights Watch said Yazidi armed groups reportedly abducted and executed 52 Sunni Arab civilians in retaliation for Daesh abuses.<\/p>\n

\nFearing similar abuses, Abu Enad still lives about 10 km from his farm, and was only able to tend to it during planting season with a paramilitary escort.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe had to leave at 4:00 p.m. every day because the situation was not safe enough. So how could you come back with your family to resume farming and living here?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nAcross Iraq, around a third of the population relies on farming to survive, and the ratio was even higher in Sinjar.<\/p>\n

\nFor centuries, the region\u2019s diverse farmers jointly sold their fig and wheat harvests in the provincial capital of Mosul, 120 km to the east.<\/p>\n

\nBut in the wake of Daesh, farming equipment was stolen, orchards burned, and rubble stuffed into irrigation wells.<\/p>\n

\nNow, the area\u2019s once-lush farming hamlets have been reduced to ruined ghost towns, with most Arab villages including Abu Enad\u2019s left flattened.<\/p>\n

\nA few kilometers to the north, the main town of Sinjar is also still rubble, with little power, water, or health services available.<\/p>\n

\nA few thousand Yazidi families have come back, but tens of thousands more are still stuck in displacement camps elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, while others fled to Europe.<\/p>\n

\nAnd more than 3,000 Yazidis remain missing, many of them believed to be women and girls taken as sex slaves.<\/p>\n

\nThat has made it difficult for the community to forgive or forget the mass crimes against them.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Arabs of Sinjar were involved in the abduction of our women,\u201d said Yazidi cleric Sheikh Fakher Khalaf.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThey betrayed the co-existence we had, so they can no longer live among us,\u201d said Khalaf, who returned home to Sinjar after three years of displacement.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThose who have done nothing, we respect them. But those who have blood on their hands, they must face justice. Sinjar is not a place for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSeveral local initiatives have made minimal progress on reconciliation, but efforts have not gone far enough, said the Norwegian Refugee Council.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe are seeing plans to rebuild and rehabilitate some parts, but we\u2019re not seeing any concrete process toward reconciliations,\u201d said spokesman Tom Peyre-Costa.<\/p>\n

\nHe called for more dialogue between communities, transparent and fair trials, and accountability for all perpetrators of crimes.<\/p>\n

\nIraqi courts have tried hundreds for belonging to Daesh, handing down at least 300 death sentences.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cPeople who used to be able to live together are not able to do so anymore because of the tension between communities, so this is why reconciliation must be prioritized,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nWhile the communal fissures in Sinjar are particularly deep, the challenge of rebuilding trust after Daesh is one faced across Iraqi society.<\/p>\n

\nDisplaced Sunnis with perceived ties to Daesh undergo tough screening processes to return to their hometowns, where they sometimes face harassment.<\/p>\n

\nAbu Enad, the displaced farmer, still hopes that Sinjar can return to its harmonious past.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe Sunnis have been hurt by Daesh like Yazidis were hurt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe want to come back to our land so we can farm and live off the fruits of our labor alongside them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SINJAR:\u00a0For decades, his land was his life. Now, like other Sunni Arab farmers in Iraq\u2019s diverse north, Mahdi Abu Enad is cut off from his fields, fearing reprisal attacks. He hails from the mountainous region of Sinjar, which borders Syria and is home to an array of communities \u2014 Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}