Thread by @Matthew__Barber

1) Reports today of #KDP secret police preventing displaced #Yazidi families from returning to their homes in #Sinjar.
facebook.com/ezidxantv.tv/p…
#Iraq #Kurdistan #KRG

2) This is a sick game the KDP has played since Jan. 2016—a deliberate political strategy that prevents genocide survivors from recovering until KDP powers can unilaterally reassert control and regain hegemony in Sinjar.

3) There have been moments of temporary softening of this policy—during instances when Western pressure on the KDP to end this flagrant abuse of Yazidi human rights has occurred—but KRG allies are habitually quick to forget about the problem and the KDP always resumes the policy.

4) Over the last two years, the KDP has often pretended that its policy of the complete closure of the Dohuk-Sinjar road was finished, but it began to pursue other measures to keep Yazidis bound to the camps.

5) These have included a lengthy paperwork process to secure "permission" to move home, often taking weeks or months and requiring applicants to progress through a series of inhospitable bureaucracies difficult for ordinary people without political connections to navigate.

6) Another measure to inhibit return has been to prevent people from transporting their personal belongings with them. KDP officials will claim that the road is open to returnees, but secret police will not allow families to take their household goods, furniture, foodstuffs, etc.

7) The KDP "host community" receives a continual influx of millions of dollars through the NGO industry that are spent in the local community (supply shops, food producers, clothing & furniture stores, etc.) in the care of IDPs.

8) Multiple reasons exist, therefore, for keeping Yazidis as virtual prisoners in the camps. Yazidis may be technically free to leave the camps and move about, but they are not free as human beings needing to rebuild their lives in a humane and dignified way.

9) Reports today refer to around 50 #Yazidi families being humiliated in this fashion, prevented access to their own homes in #Sinjar and forced to sleep on the ground overnight at Khatara checkpoint:

https://twitter.com/hyjohnston/status/1271423176963248128

h/t @hyjohnston

10) Will this ever end? Yazidis don't need to be the recipients of endless aid; they can rebuild their own economy. What they need is international pressure to guarantee their right to form in Sinjar the same kind of local administration that exists in other districts of Iraq.

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