Announcement: Establishment of a Yazidi Relief Fund (please share) Our humanitarian duty to the Yazidis A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Iraq and an urgent call for help is being made to Australians by Manning Clark House in Canberra. The United Nations estimates that more than half a million Yazidi and Christian refugees have fled the crisis at Mount Sinjar to seek refuge in Kurdistan’s capital. Despite recent American claims that the siege of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq has been broken, Yazidi leaders and United Nations humanitarian officials have confirmed today that tens of thousands of Yazidis remain stranded on the southern side of the mountain – where US helicopters cannot land. Iraqi MP Ms Dakhil estimates the number of Yazidis still trapped Mount Sinjar at around 40,000. American planes have dropped enough food on Mount Sinjar for around 8000 people. The crisis on Mount Sinjar is by no means over, said David Swanson, the spokesman for the UN co-ordinator of humanitarian affairs in northern Iraq, interviewed by telephone from Dohuk, in northern Iraq. Although many people managed to escape from the north side, there are still thousands of others up there, under conditions of extreme heat, dehydration and imminent threat of attack. The situation is far from solved. Although airdrops have provided some desperately needed medical supplies and food, much of the promised international humanitarian aid has failed to materialise. Without immediate help hundreds, if not thousands, of people will die on Mount Sinjar and as refugees en route to Kurdistan. In the wake of Australia’s response to the 2004 Tsunami, Defence Force Chief General (now Governor General) Peter Cosgrove remarked that values such as ‘compassion and generosity’ are part of our ‘nation’s national character’. Indeed, Australia’s First World War experience in the Middle East was not just defined by military heroism but of humanitarianism. In early 1918, Anzac light horsemen and Cameelers helped rescue thousands of destitute Armenian refugees when they captured Palestine. In a touching display of humanity amid the horrors of war, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur J. Mills of the 4th (Anzac) Battalion, Imperial Camel Corps, carried a 4-year-old Armenian ‘girl sleeping in his arms, on his camel’ to safety. Another spectacular rescue effort was spearheaded by Australian Colonel Stanley G. Savige. As a member of the élite Dunsterforce, Savige and his colleagues defended a column of some 80,000 Armenian and Assyrian refugees fleeing the invading Ottoman Army in Mesopotamia during the summer of 1918. Savige was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his role in the rescue effort. Back home, with the support of many prominent Australian political, civic, religious and business leaders an Armenian relief fund was established in 1915. The relief effort culminated in an Australian run orphanage in Lebanon for 1700 Armenian orphan victims of the Great War. The institution was described at the time as ‘thoroughly Australian as if it stood in one of the streets of Melbourne or Sydney’, and one ‘which the people of this country may feel justifiable pride.’ Many prominent Australian women were at the forefront of the relief effort. They included Australian Red Cross leader, Eleanor Mackinnon, and Sydney feminist Edith Glanville. During the Great War, Edith was involved in patriotic duty as secretary of the Australian soldier’s comforts fund. Her son Leigh of the 1st Battalion of the AIF was killed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, and it was because of this tragic event she became interested in humanitarianism and world peace. In the late 1920s, Edith travelled several times to the Middle East as a relief worker. During her travels, she became perhaps the first Australian woman to visit the Yazide community of Iraq. In a welcoming message to Edith, the leader of the Yazidis stated ‘The English are our friends’, for they had ‘stopped the persecution of my people’. Edith found the Yazidis to be ‘very hospitable, and apparently peaceful and industrious, and as they certainly are amongst the most picturesque figures in this land of ancient faiths and forgotten beginnings’. Edith visited their holiest site, Lalesh temple, situated in a valley in Nineveh Province. Edith was told that only one other western woman had visited the site. Edith returned to the Middle East again in the early 1930s to provide relief to the Christian Assyrians who had fled persecution from Iraq into Syria. Her work on their behalf won her many privileges. The French high commissioner in Syria gave Edith special permission to aid the Assyrian refugees in getting settled, the only ‘Britisher’ allowed to do so. She attended meetings at the League of Nations four times pleading for assistance on their behalf. Some eight decades later, the Middle East continues to be the scene of a major humanitarian disaster. Between Mount Sinjar and Kurdistan, families who have already witnessed atrocities beyond all human comprehension are in desperate need of food, shelter and medical supplies. With world newspapers now claiming the crisis is over, it is increasingly unlikely that governments will provide the help they need. It falls, then, to the community to act where governments will not – to send a clear message that the Australian people will not turn their backs on the suffering and the displaced. Manning Clark House is calling for urgent funds to buy food and medical supplies to keep Yazidi families alive while they are rescued from Mount Sinjar and make their way to Kurdistan. Support is also needed for refugees in Erbil and other Kurdish centres. Genocide is looming for minority populations in the Middle East, particularly the Yazidis. Their call for help needs to be answered. While Australia celebrates 100 years since Anzac we would do well to remember that part of our nation’s legacy is to help victims of war. Vicken Babkenian, Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Judith Crispin, Director of Manning Clark House If you would like to support the Yazidi Relief Fund please contact Manning Clark House at [email protected] or by phone 02-6295 1808.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 05:11:59 +0000
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