"Háwar," the Yazidis cry for help

Háwar – My Journey to Genocide, a documentary by journalist and human rights activist Düzen Tekkal, is essential viewing if we are to understand the human costs of ISIS’s war in the Middle East. The film records the predicament of the Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority in Iraq. In August 2014, ISIS launched a brutal offensive against the Yazidis in northern Iraq, including Sinjar, a town close to the Chermera Temple, one of the most important Yazidi shrines. ISIS killed thousands of Yazidi men, abducted thousands of Yazidi women and children, and displaced hundreds of thousands more from their ancestral lands. In 2015, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights classified ISIS’s actions as a genocide. The true scale of this tragedy is still unknown.

Düzen Tekkal visited Yale along with her sister, Tezcan, for a screening of her documentary at the Yale Law School on September 11. Born to Yazidi parents who emigrated to Germany in the 1970s, the sisters now run HÁWAR.help, an NGO providing humanitarian aid to Yazidis. “I think it’s a very sad story because it’s about genocide,” Düzen said just before the screening. “And I think when we talk about an ongoing genocide it’s important to meet the people who are part of the persecuted community and religion. That’s why we are here today.”

Düzen traveled to Iraq for the first time very soon after the ISIS assaults. It was understandably a personal journey. She had long been planning to visit the Yazidi sites of pilgrimage in Lalish and Sinjar with her father, Seyhmus. She did not anticipate journeying to her roots during an ongoing genocide. Yet she could not ignore her kin’s cry for help, their háwar. “What I saw with my own eyes changed my life completely. Not just my life but also my sister’s, who is here with me today,” Düzen says. “The reason why we have come to Yale is because I think we have to talk about what is happening on other side of this world, where the people are not so safe. For responsible citizens and students, who may become the change makers of tomorrow, we are here to act as translators, because we inhabit both worlds.”

“When, in 2014, ISIS came to our villages in Northern Iraq and Sinjar, and abducted our women and killed our fathers and mothers, I was living a safe life in Germany like you are here in Yale. Everything was fine, perfect,” Düzen recalls. “I was working as a journalist at the time and I received a lot of phone calls from people I knew in Iraq. They felt like cries for survival.”

ISIS militias had given the Yazidis in Sinjar three days to leave Iraq. Those who remained would be forcibly converted to Islam or face death and torture. The Yazidis used this time to inform various authorities, diplomatic missions, international organizations and journalists. Yet no one answered the call for help. “Here is an ongoing genocide in the age of the internet and cellphones but no one is interested in it,” says Düzen, the incredulity palpable in her voice.

She felt she had to do something. “I thought as a journalist, and as a Yazidi, because we are a very small community, I had to go to help my people. This was a week after James Foley was beheaded. I remember saying to myself, ‘This is the most dangerous place in the world’.” Yet Düzen was determined to help. “That night I did not sleep well. When I woke up I realized I had to go there. Fear was no option.”

The long history of persecution against the Yazidis and its consequences for the community deeply informs Düzen’s work. “As a daughter born in a religious minority, you always know where you are from and what you have to fight for. For yourself, for your life. This was the reason why I was studying politics at university. I wanted to make our people known in the world,” she says. This constant fight for survival teaches one to turn adversity into strength. Even amidst the adversity of the killings, Düzen finds a silver lining. “No one knew anything about us. ISIS made us very famous because of this genocide. So now people know about our suffering.”

Háwar documents the experiences of Düzen’s first journeys to her ancestral homelands and her interactions with Yazidi refugees. She admits that she did not know what she was going to find. “When you’re in a war, you don’t think about planning. You’re just reacting. You’re reacting as a human being to other human beings who need help. These are the moments when you realize your own strength. I also realized very quickly that I was there not merely as a journalist but also as a Yazidi.”

Düzen points out the similarities between the historical persecution of the Yazidis and that of the Jews. “I think this is the reason why we are so involved in this fight against anti-Semitism. We cannot compare 2014 with the Holocaust, but it is plain to see that we can’t say ‘never again.’ To be dehumanized because of one’s religion is the loss of civility. Perhaps in the U.S. you are lucky to be far enough away. But for the Yazidis, the idea of a secure freedom does not exist anymore.”

Betrayed by many of their Muslim neighbors and temporarily abandoned by the Peshmerga, the Kurdish army which normally protects them, tens of thousands of Yazidis fled to the Sinjar Mountains. Without food or water many perished in the oppressive heat while making their way through the treacherous terrain. To survive, families had to leave their dead and the ailing, often the elderly and children. Yet, the fate of those captured by ISIS was much worse. The men were slaughtered. Young women were subjected to sexual slavery. Boys were turned into child soldiers. The documentary shows the aftermath of these events in heart-wrenching detail.

The genocide has affected every aspect of the worldwide Yazidi community. In Háwar, Düzen meets Fahim, a German Yazidi like herself and a university student, who has taken up arms against ISIS. He battles for the Yazidi while on break from his studies. “There is no humanity left in the world anymore,” Fahim says. He fights in Shinghal to protect the Yazidi shrine. But a community is made of its people, and they are all dispersed because of ISIS’s onslaught. The Yazidis may yet defend their holy places but it is uncertain if the displaced people will be able to return to Sinjar.

When Düzen and Fahim meet again in Germany it is clear that both of them are ill at ease. They can draw breath in the peaceful surroundings of Hanover but their spirits are with their kin in northern Iraq. “It is something which you don’t forget,” Düzen tells us. “It is like baggage, you know? You’re taking it with you, but it is something horrible.”

The audience is certainly left reeling. “The documentary is a weapon,” says Tezcan once the screening is over. “It hits you hard. And we want it to have that effect. That’s why it’s important for Düzen to be present afterwards to bring the audience back.” True enough, Düzen expertly resuscitates the room in the post-screening discussion. But she does not have much good news to share. “Things now are much worse than what you see in the documentary,” she tells the audience.

But through Düzen’s activism springs some hope. She was one of the first journalists able to speak to Yazidi women who escaped ISIS’s enslavement. For instance, she spoke to Nadia Murad, the UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, well before Murad became the face of the Yazidi struggle. “They are not just victims,” Düzen says of the women escaping from Raqqa and other ISIS strongholds. “They are more powerful than we are. They are survivors. They are fighters. We are talking about people who lost dozens of family members. They believe they survived ISIS to be able to tell the world what they what happened to them as people, what hell feels like.”

Part of Düzen’s new work with HÁWAR.help is, she says, “to empower these Yazidi women.” The Yazidi faith is traditionally endogamous. Sexual relations with, or marriage to, non-Yazidis normally leads to excommunication. “When ISIS abducted and raped our women, they knew the women could no longer be Yazidis. But our holiness, Baba Sheikh Khurto Hajji Ismail, the Yazidi religious leader, deemed that they would remain Yazidi,” she reveals.

“The women were not guilty, they were victims. They could not be both victims and guilty. Only the perpetrators were guilty,” Düzen says. “This change in perspective is something that is very, very important for our culture, because it gives us a chance to recover, to exist.” Even amidst the ravages of genocide, the Yazidis manage to look to the future. “For us, in a way, it has meant reformation and revolution.”

“We need action,” Düzen tell us. “We have a human rights organization and we are not the only ones. But we need help. We need volunteers, we need education, we need the kind of people ready to brave the adversities and help others. I don’t think you can win a fight against terrorism alone. We have to be stronger, louder. When we are invited to a place like Yale, it gives us a voice.” But the problem is also of attitudes. “Not everyone has to go to the front lines in Iraq or the Middle East. But you have to make clear by your actions that you are standing on the right side. I think people can do more than they are right now.” To confront a problem like genocide, every little bit helps.

Düzen and Tezcan Tekkal came to Yale to screen Háwar – My Journey to Genocide at the invitation of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at the Yale Law School, and was also sponsored by the Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale; the MacMillan Center and its Genocide Studies Program, Council on Middle Eastern Studies, and Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence; as well as Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. For more information, visit: https://hawar.help/?lang=en.

Written by Anurag Sinha, a Yale graduate student in the department of political science.