The Yazidis Need Our Help

The Yazidis of Iraq need our immediate assistance. They are facing difficult times. They are being killed and tortured. Yazidi women are being captured/kidnapped and sold as slaves.

Not very long ago, the Indian mission in Iraq successfully managed to get Indian nurses out of captivity without having to fight a war.

Unfortunately, the Yazidis are not Indian citizens or for that matter citizens of United States or Russia or China or European Union. So no one is negotiating the release of the Yazidis, women and children in particular. The mass killings and torture of the Yazidis must stop immediately.

In order to truly help we must realize that we are not separate from others. In fact, we are not separate from anything. If others are hurt, we will be hurt. If there is conflict then there must be as lot of people who have been exploited.

Economic and social exploitation and discrimination cause great dissatisfaction as they obstruct our freedom and right to wellbeing. Exploitation is a result of the wrong view that we are separate and different from others. It leads to a feeling of superiority or inferiority.

Social exploitation includes ill treatment of an individual or community on religious, racial or other communal/ideological grounds. Economic exploitation is to take what is not ours from an individual or community.

All participants in this conflict have reason to believe that they are victims. Each feel that they have been economically or socially exploited. Only corporations profit from conflicts. In the Middle East, conflict helps push up oil prices which benefits major oil marketing nations. Conflict also increases the revenues of weapon manufacturers.

We would not do this to ourselves. We would not push ourselves onto the battlefield so our corporations can make money. Unfortunately, we think that the Middle East is not us. They are not Indian, Chinese, Russian, American or European. We think it is not about us. We are wrong. The Yazidi women are our sisters. Our sisters are family. They need our help right now.

From the fact that they are being sold as slaves, it appears that it may be possible to secure their release through negotiation. Kindly get your embassy in Iraq to negotiate the release of the Yazidis and find a safe place for them to recover from the trauma they have been subjected to.