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Welcome to HARDtalk, with me, Zeinab Badawi. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:13 | |
The so-called Islamic State may be coming under pressure | 0:00:13 | 0:00:15 | |
in both Syria and Iraq, but still, accounts emerge | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
of atrocities carried out by them. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
The minority Yazidi community has been amongst one of the most | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
persecuted groups of people, living mostly in northern Iraq. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
They have been killed, forced to convert to Islam, | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
and the women and girls have been held in sexual slavery. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
My guest is psychologist Jan Kizilhan, a Yazidi Kurd | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
living in Germany. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
He's helped bring 1,000 Yazidi females from camps in Iraq | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
to Germany to start a new life. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:44 | |
How does he decide who should stay and who should go? | 0:00:44 | 0:00:48 | |
Jan Kizilhan, welcome to HARDtalk. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:18 | |
Thank you. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:19 | |
What is your main goal, purpose, in rescuing | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
these women and children, bringing them from Iraq to Germany? | 0:01:21 | 0:01:33 | |
They are under pressure, psychological pressure. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
They have post-traumatic stress disorder because they were for | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
moments in the hands of IS. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:39 | |
Tortured. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:40 | |
Violated. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:41 | |
Exploited and a lot of things. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:52 | |
Our main goal is to bring exploited women and girls for medical | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
treatment and psychological treatment to Germany. | 0:01:56 | 0:01:57 | |
You live in Stuttgart, the capital of the state | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
of Baden-Wurttemberg, and the state runs a special project | 0:02:00 | 0:02:02 | |
to rescue Yazidi women and children from these camps in Iraq. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:07 | |
But you also help Shia Muslims as well as Christians, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:09 | |
but mostly Yazidis. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:10 | |
Why just the Yazidis? | 0:02:10 | 0:02:11 | |
Actually, we didn't make any differences. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:13 | |
The state government decided to bring in vulnerable women | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
and girls who were in the hands of IS, but unfortunately, | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
most of them are Yazidis, because IS targeted on 3rd of August | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
2014 mostly the Yazidi areas of Sinjar. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:34 | |
And the first two weeks, they killed more two and 3000 people, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:52 | |
people, and then bring women and girls to enslavement, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:54 | |
to assault them, to work at Mosul, at Tel Afar and other cities. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
As well, Christians were part of this, and Shias, but most | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
of them are Yazidis. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:02 | |
We heard in August 2014, when Sinjar, the town | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
was controlled by Isis, fell to IS, and we heard | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
the terrible reports of what happened to the Yazidi women. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
You yourself are a Yazidi Kurd. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
You were born in a small village in eastern Turkey | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
to a very poor family. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
Your father was in fact illiterate. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:17 | |
You then went to Germany when you were six years of age, | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
joined your parents there, became highly, highly educated. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
You've got so many qualifications and degrees. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:25 | |
You're a psychologist. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:25 | |
Do you feel a responsibility, as an educated Yazidi, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
to help people in your community? | 0:03:28 | 0:03:36 | |
Actually, you know, they are my people, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
so of course I feel responsible, but in the last ten or 15 years, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
I work also with survivors from Rwanda, from Bosnia, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:44 | |
so I'm Professor in psychology and working very professional. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
When the state government asked me to help, of course, I have no way... | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
I had to say yes. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
I speak the language. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:53 | |
I know the people. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
I know the area, and we had just a small time of one year | 0:03:55 | 0:04:00 | |
to find 1,100 people, to examine them and to bring | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
them to a different kind of security, to Germany, | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
which was very difficult. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:07 | |
So I said, yes, of course, I will do that. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
You say it is very difficult. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
You have in fact made 30 visits to the camps in northern Iraq | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
in the last two years to interview the Yazidi females who are held | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
there, who were former sex slaves, really, for IS. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
What criteria do do you use to make this very difficult | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
decision you referred to? | 0:04:26 | 0:04:33 | |
I myself examining and interviewed the last year, 2015, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
about 1403 women and girls myself, and talked to each one. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:41 | |
We had three different kinds of criteria. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:49 | |
One criteria was, they must be in the hands of IS. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
And now living in some camps, refugee camps, in Iraq. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:57 | |
They have post-traumatic stress disorder because IS | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
violated and tortured. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
The youngest girl was eight years that I examined myself, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
and they assault eight times and raped hundreds of times | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
during the ten months she was in the hands of IS, | 0:05:08 | 0:05:13 | |
so she has a psychological disorder and needed urgently help. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
She had suicide ideas. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:21 | |
She didn't want to survive, to live, she had no parents, | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
or her parents were killed. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
So this was our duty, to say, we have to help. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
The third criteria was, in Germany, we should | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
have the know-how to help them, with doctors, with translators, | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
with social workers, with clinical work, and we used this | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
criteria - to be in the hands of IS, medical criteria, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
psychological criteria, and we should be able | 0:05:40 | 0:05:42 | |
to help them in Germany. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
Huge responsibility for you, really, to decide who should remain | 0:05:44 | 0:05:49 | |
in the camp, with all the trauma and distressed that they have | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
experienced, and who should then be taken to Germany for help. | 0:05:53 | 0:06:01 | |
How do you feel, with such a huge burden on your shoulders? | 0:06:02 | 0:06:07 | |
Not really good, because our job... | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
The political decision was to bring 1,000 people, not more. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
But we have thousands of people who have this criteria. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
So we have to look very clear, and we specialise | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
and target women and girls. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:24 | |
We are talking about a patriarchal society. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
Even when women and girls were raped by IS, some of the people had | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
problems with honour, and so-called dishonour problems. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:38 | |
So we didn't take men, or we just said, it is very | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
important to find these girls and to bring them, and just | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
be honest, sometimes. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
I had one case that one women, who we decided, I was not clear | 0:06:47 | 0:06:52 | |
if we should take her or not. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
But always I had this eight years girl in front of my eyes. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
She needs help. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:00 | |
During my time in 2015 when I was in Iraq, about 60 | 0:07:00 | 0:07:05 | |
women killed themselves, committed suicide, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
because they were not able to live under this situation, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:14 | |
in camps where 20,000 people live, in refugee camps. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:19 | |
They have no doctors, no psychologists, they have | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
nightmares, they had fear. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
Even I had one girl, 16 years old, she was in a tent and she believed | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
IS had come back again, through her nightmare, and she took | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
gasoline and burned herself. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
She was 80% of her skin was totally burned. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
So we had no choices. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:40 | |
We had to bring them out of Iraq to Germany. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
She burned herself because she was worried that she would be taken | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
by IS and health as a sexual slave, so wanted to make | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
herself unattractive? | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
Exactly. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:55 | |
Not trying to kill herself? | 0:07:55 | 0:07:58 | |
No, her fear was, I have to make me unattractive, to be ugly. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
If I'm ugly, they will not rape me. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
And so, she took just the gas and burned herself, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
just to be left alone, but it is a kind of | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
post-traumatic stress disorder. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:13 | |
They have nightmares, sometimes psychotic symptoms, | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
and she believed at that time that IS was in front of the tent. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:23 | |
So you choose people like that, who you feel that you can | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
help back in Germany? | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
But how do you feel about those you have to leave behind. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
It's a huge responsibility. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:32 | |
Not very good. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:33 | |
We talk to different kind of countries with different kind | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
of state government. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:38 | |
In Germany, we have 16 states. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
I hope even now, Canada or Britain, will take some of these very, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:46 | |
very vulnerable women and girls for medical treatment | 0:08:46 | 0:08:47 | |
very vulnerable women and girls for medical treatment | 0:08:47 | 0:08:48 | |
to Europe or to Canada. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:56 | |
Because there is still nearly 2000 Yazidi women and girls who were held | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
by so-called Islamic State, and they are now living in camps? | 0:08:59 | 0:09:05 | |
Yes, and the number will probably rise, because after Mosul and Raqqa, | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
we have still 3400 women and girls in the hands of IS. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:16 | |
What will happen with them when they are freed? | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
They need urgent help. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:20 | |
And for that reason, it is very important that another | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
country can support these women. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
And you've explained about some of the cases | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
that you've come across, but I wonder if you could give us | 0:09:29 | 0:09:33 | |
some more examples of the kind of tragic cases you've come | 0:09:33 | 0:09:35 | |
across when you are interviewing these women. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:40 | |
The most case that impressed me, because I'm a father, | 0:09:40 | 0:09:42 | |
I have to daughters myself, was a 26 years woman, | 0:09:42 | 0:09:48 | |
who was taken in the hands of IS. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:50 | |
She was from Sinjar, a small village, with three | 0:09:50 | 0:09:53 | |
children, her husband, his father, his father-in-law, | 0:09:53 | 0:09:58 | |
and 20 and other family members were killed in front | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
of her eyes, executed. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
And they take them hostage for 30 months, and she has | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
a two years old girl, and she was also killed by IS, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
and she is now in Germany. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
She is my patient. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
So her two-year-old child was killed before her very eyes, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:19 | |
amongst other family members? | 0:10:19 | 0:10:20 | |
Yes, and always she says, I can accept my husband | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and my father are killed, but how they can kill | 0:10:24 | 0:10:30 | |
a two-year-old girl. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
What is your answer to that? | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
Because you have written a book, The Psychology Of Isis. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
You have interviewed three former IS fighters | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
in prison in Kirkuk in Iraq. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
What makes somebody commit such an unspeakably evil act? | 0:10:43 | 0:10:51 | |
What IS is doing after 2014, they have a set | 0:10:51 | 0:10:56 | |
of some Islamic elements. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
A new ideology. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:00 | |
It's not Islam, but it's ideology. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:02 | |
Ideology makes a person blind. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:15 | |
The IS has two criteria, two categories. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
One is a worse person, who belongs to the caliphate of al-Baghdadi, | 0:11:17 | 0:11:22 | |
and other people are infidels, like Yazidis, Shias and Christians, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:33 | |
and they have just the right to be a slave or to be killed. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
And so they make us an object. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:38 | |
We are not human, a kind of dehumanisation of the human. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:45 | |
They kill a Yazidi, an eight-year-old girl, | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
and they view her as not human, they are like chickens, | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
they are actually not a human, they have no feeling of empathy. | 0:11:50 | 0:12:01 | |
They don't feel anything if they kill Kurds, | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
this kind of person. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:04 | |
This is how it works. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
If you look back to the history... | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
I'm from Germany, and we witnessed this with the Nazi regime. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
The Nazi regime was the same with Jewish. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
I put to use something that Scott Atran, an anthropologist | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
who has advised the United Nations and the White House on terror, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
and he says, we have to acknowledge that Isis fighters more similar | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
to ask psychologically than we might like to believe. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:27 | |
-- to us. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:28 | |
Violent people, members of militant political groups | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
and religious groups are people, just like everyone else. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
It's unsettling to think that terrorists who commit violent acts | 0:12:33 | 0:12:35 | |
are not psychologically disturbed or brainwashed. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
Do you agree with that assessment? | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
Absolutely. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
I talk myself to 3 members of IS, and I examine interviews, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
and I can clearly say they have no psychological disorders. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
Maybe 1% of them have any psychological problems, but most | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
of them are very normal people. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:58 | |
They came from normal families, had a normal biological background. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:01 | |
But this kind of ideology changed people. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
But is it brainwashing? | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
Scott Atran says it is not brainwashing. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
But you think it is? | 0:13:11 | 0:13:12 | |
No, it's not. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:13 | |
This is a concept of life. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
It makes us different to believe that, because we are living | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
in a democratic country, we believe in individuals, and they | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
have another concept of life. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
This concept of life is very different to our own. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:30 | |
They believe in a collective way of life. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
They believe every person has to do the same, otherwise | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
they have to be punished. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
But your main focus, of course, is working | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
with the victims of the IS fighters, and there are, globally, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
about 1 million Yazidis. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:52 | |
430,000 of them live in Iraq, and others also in Syria, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
and about 500 in Turkey and other parts of the world. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
There are 300,000 displaced. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
They need help, don't they, in the region where they live? | 0:14:03 | 0:14:10 | |
Shouldn't that be your main objective, rather than seeking | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
to resettle them in the West? | 0:14:13 | 0:14:17 | |
We did do both. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
First, when we did this special programme, it was emergency cases. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:26 | |
If we didn't help these people, they wouldn't survive. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
To give you an example, we've been talking about 5 million | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
people living in northern Iraq. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
We have 26 psychiatrists and psychologists. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
They are not able to help them. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
As I mentioned, about 60 people, women and girls, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
committed suicide themselves. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
So it was an emergency issue. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
We had to help, otherwise they wouldn't have survived. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
The second, you are absolutely right. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:52 | |
We have to do more projects in Iraq and Syria. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
The people must live there under different conditions, | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
so we've started now to set up an institution of psychotherapy | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
and psycho-traumatology. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:03 | |
We will start that in March 2017, to train psychologists, doctors, | 0:15:03 | 0:15:09 | |
to be psychotherapists, because they should be able | 0:15:09 | 0:15:11 | |
to help their own people in their own country. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:15 | |
And that is what you are doing in northern Iraq? | 0:15:15 | 0:15:17 | |
Yes. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:19 | |
And you are flying out there later this month to do that? | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
I think the displaced number is between 300,000 and 400,000. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:25 | |
400,000. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:26 | |
Could be as much as that. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
So when Nadia Murad and Lamiya Bashar, two Yazidi women | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
who had been captured by IS and were awarded | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, they say, | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
if the world cannot protect the Yazidis in their homeland, | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
we ask Europe to give us a safe new home. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
That's what they said in December, last month. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
Are they wrong, then? | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
Do you agree with that statement? | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
I know Nadia because I examined her myself. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
She is one of the people of our programme, and also Lamiya, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:57 | |
so I can understand, because what will happen | 0:15:57 | 0:15:59 | |
after IS has gone? | 0:15:59 | 0:16:02 | |
What will happen with Iraq? | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
We are talking about nearly 450,000 Yazidis living in refugee camps, | 0:16:06 | 0:16:14 | |
and about 800,000 living normally in Sinjar. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:15 | |
What will happen then after this situation? | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
What we are facing is, you know, the Yazidis face now | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
the 71st time a genocide. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:29 | |
Through the last 800 years, about 1,000,800 Yazidis | 0:16:29 | 0:16:31 | |
were converted to Islam by force. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:33 | |
About 1,000,200 Yazidis were killed in the last 800 years. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:40 | |
So there is a kind of mistrust to the Islamic society, | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
because every time they are massacred and face | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
genocide by Muslims. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:46 | |
So they need and they believe like Britain, like America, | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
like European countries can help them to have a safe zone, | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
and they will maybe have a kind of security, a feeling of security, | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
at least, that they are not alone. | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
That is the reason why I can understand Nadia Murad saying | 0:17:00 | 0:17:04 | |
that we need a safe zone. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:08 | |
Just picking up on that point of genocide. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
This is a point of fact. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:12 | |
You say that genocide has been committed against the Yazidis, | 0:17:12 | 0:17:14 | |
but not all members of the international community | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
accept the term "genocide". | 0:17:17 | 0:17:18 | |
The United Kingdom's government hasn't, for instance. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
The US state department has. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
But the point is, are you saying you agree with these two Yazidi | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
women that the objective is that all Yazidis should be | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
resettled in the West, because there is compassion fatigue | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
now, isn't there? | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
In a lot of western countries. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
People are saying, we don't want open door refugee policies. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
We've seen the kind of criticisms that Angela Merkel, | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
the Chancellor of Germany, has been receiving because | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
of her open-door policy. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
I believe, if we are talking about one of the oldest | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
religions in the world, at least in the Middle East, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
the Yazidis have a history of about 4000 years. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
They should live like Christians, in their homeland. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
For that reason, we have a new scenario, political ideas, | 0:18:02 | 0:18:09 | |
of how we can give them a feeling of security, | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
give them a new structure. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:14 | |
For me, the best way is to come back to Sinjar, to that area, | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
but maybe the world community could help to make Sinjar reborn. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
It is totally destroyed. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:26 | |
Maybe they can give it some ideas of how to live free, | 0:18:26 | 0:18:32 | |
to give some militia, to give schools in Kurdish, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
to allow them to live like Yazidis. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:38 | |
Benefits for them to remain in the region? | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
Yes. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
Do you believe that the vast majority of these 1100 women | 0:18:43 | 0:18:47 | |
and children who you have resettled in Germany, and you are hoping that | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
more will go to Canada, for instance, of those former | 0:18:51 | 0:18:59 | |
captives of IS who are still being held, do you think | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
they will stay in Germany? | 0:19:02 | 0:19:04 | |
They will never go back to the region, will they? | 0:19:04 | 0:19:06 | |
In that time, when I'm talking to the women, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
because I'm still responsible for the medical and psychological | 0:19:09 | 0:19:11 | |
issue for these women and girls, about 90% of them don't want to go | 0:19:11 | 0:19:20 | |
back to Iraq, because the war is going on. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
Still we have IS in Sinjar, but what will happen in five | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
years and ten years, I didn't know. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:27 | |
Maybe if they have more rights, there is a democracy in Iraq, | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
maybe they will go back. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:32 | |
But most of them don't want to go back. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
And when Mrs Merkel also talks about the refugees coming | 0:19:34 | 0:19:38 | |
to Germany, she says, the necessity of integrating these | 0:19:38 | 0:19:40 | |
newcomers is very important, so that they adhere | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
to Germany's democratic values. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:43 | |
That's something you agree with, presumably? | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
Absolutely. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:49 | |
Our programme is very different. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:51 | |
All the women are visiting schools. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:53 | |
They are learning German. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:54 | |
They are now starting to work. | 0:19:54 | 0:20:01 | |
They have psychotherapy and medical treatment, | 0:20:01 | 0:20:06 | |
but they are living in 24 different kinds of cities in small groups. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
They have a good contact with Germans, and integration | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
is very important. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:15 | |
All immigrants have to be integrated. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:16 | |
If you learn the culture, the values and the languages, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
you have more competence for yourself and for this country. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:25 | |
And these women are very motivated, because they know what it | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
means to be tortured, to be not free. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:32 | |
They are now free, and they are very motivated, with high self-confidence | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
to do something with their lives, to have a job, to go to school. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
We have children. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:41 | |
Our children are visiting schools, and they are very successful. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
How are the children coping? | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
Because you talked about girls as young as eight being raped | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
multiple times, and that kind of unimaginable trauma | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
and experience they must have gone through. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
How are they? | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
To give you an example, we have some children | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
between four and ten years old. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:05 | |
They are visiting now two schools. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
The first question they asked me in Iraq was, do you have | 0:21:09 | 0:21:13 | |
in Germany schools? | 0:21:13 | 0:21:13 | |
I said, yes, we have schools. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
Because they are motivated. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:16 | |
They want to go to school. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
School means to give structure. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:23 | |
Every day they get up at 7.00am, they go to school, they come back, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
they have orientation, they have security and | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
a feeling of safeness. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:29 | |
These three basics are very important. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:31 | |
If they have a feeling of security, they have orientation | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
and a structure, the children are very clever. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
They can learn and they can cope with this. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:41 | |
We believe there are about 1000 children who were taken | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
by IS and used as child soldiers. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:48 | |
Have you come across any of them, any of these, in some of the ones | 0:21:48 | 0:21:52 | |
you have taken back to Germany, and how are they coping? | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
We have actually a small group of ten to 12 persons | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
who were soldiers, IS soldiers, and we need a social concept, | 0:21:58 | 0:22:05 | |
to talk with them, to be with them, and you need at least two years | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
to work with social work and psychologists with these people. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
So we are talking about brainwashing in these cases, | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
they are brainwashed. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:17 | |
They need time, and they need to trust us again, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:24 | |
because they don't trust any person anymore, because, | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
for example, a six-year-old boy, the father ran away, | 0:22:28 | 0:22:30 | |
and he was alone with his mother. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
They then took the mother away, and after, they came back together. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:41 | |
He mistrusted his father and his mother. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
He said, they left me alone. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
So it is a kind of feeling of children. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
Bonding is very important. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:49 | |
They must feel they are not alone. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
Your colleague, Michael Bloom, in this so-called special quota | 0:22:53 | 0:22:55 | |
project to bring Yazidis from northern Iraq to Germany, says, | 0:22:56 | 0:23:00 | |
more and more Yazidis understand that if they want to survive | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
in the diaspora, then they might have to reform | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
some of their teachings. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
For instance, some of your customs, like endogenous marriage, | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
whereby a Yazidi should marry another Yazidi is one | 0:23:12 | 0:23:14 | |
of your customs. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
But as people live in the West, they are going to be | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
losing these customs, aren't they, in time? | 0:23:19 | 0:23:21 | |
So the irony is, you rescue them as individuals, | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
as human beings, but as a community, the Yazidi community may be | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
threatened by assimilation. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:28 | |
Not really. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:32 | |
We are talking about 120 Yazidis who are living in Germany, | 0:23:32 | 0:23:38 | |
so since 15 years, the last 15 years, but we have a huge group | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
in the Yazidi community, so Yazidi women and girls | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
are not alone. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
They have friends, they have Yazidi communities, they have | 0:23:46 | 0:23:48 | |
Yazidi associations, and so I believe they can survive. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
All right. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
Jan Kizilhan, thank you very much indeed for coming on HARDtalk. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
Thank you. Thank you. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
Hello. I hope you enjoyed the weekend. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:23 | |
For many it has been grey and murky. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 |