Vian Dakhil
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Vian Dakhil (, born 1971 in
Mosul Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second large ...
) is a current member of the
Iraqi parliament The Council of Representatives ( ar, مجلس النواب, Majlis an-Nuwwāb al-ʿIrāqiyy; ku, ئه‌نجومه‌نی نوێنه‌ران, ''Enjumen-e Nûnerên''), usually referred to simply as the Parliament is the unicameral legislature o ...
. She is the only
Yazidi Yazidis or Yezidis (; ku, ئێزیدی, translit=Êzidî) are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majo ...
Kurd ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian peoples, Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Ir ...
in the Iraqi Parliament.


Background

Dakhil gained international attention during a plea for assistance for Yazidi people trapped in the
Sinjar Mountains The Sinjar Mountains ( ku, چیایێ شنگالێ, translit=Çiyayê Şingalê, ar, جبل سنجار, translit=Jabal Sinjār, syr, ܛܘܪܐ ܕܫܝܓܪ, Ṭura d'Shingar,) are a mountain range that runs east to west, rising above the surroundi ...
during
Islamic State An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
capture of
Sinjar Sinjar ( ar, سنجار, Sinjār; ku, شنگال, translit=Şingal, syr, ܫܝܓܪ, Shingar) is a town in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. It is located about five kilometers south of the Sinjar Mountains. Its p ...
, accusing Islamic State of genocide against the Yazidi people. This plea was a speech held in the Iraqi parliament held on Tuesday, 5 August 2014. In the anglophone world, the speech has gained a large audience after coverage from CNN and mentions in the Washington Post. In the
francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
world it was Tunisian magazine “Kapitalis”, the Algerian participative journal “ChoufChouf” and the “paysagesblog” in le Monde.fr which commented the plea for help of Vian Dakhil for Yazidi people facing extermination. All the French articles included a YouTube version of Vian Dakhil speech, some with French translations. The blogpost "Je vous en supplie, frères, faîtes taire vos différences pour sauver les Yézidis!" in the "YOL (routes de Turquie et d'ailleurs) blog" has also a YouTube video of the speech including English subtitles. In an Interview for
Agence France-Presse Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C ...
, distributed by
leMonde.fr ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
on 9 of August 2014 she warned that, if help was not arriving immediately – then a massive dying of the Yazidi people would begin – in the French original “« Il ne reste qu'un ou deux jours pour aider ces gens. Après, il vont commencer à mourir en masse ». In February 2016 she was a speaker at the
Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy The Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy is an annual human rights summit sponsored by a coalition of 20 non-governmental organizations. Each year, on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council's main annual session, activists from a ...
. In January and February 2016, Human Rights Watch interviewed many Arab, Sunni, Muslim, and Iraqi women from Hawija, and also interviewed the parliament "Dakhil " from the Yazidi area. Dakhil explains that all the Yazidis who escaped from the areas which were under control of Daesh. Many spent more than a year in captivity. Daesh forced the women to convert to Islam. Documented by Human Rights Watch, the systematic rape of women and girls for the first time in early 2015. In Daesh areas, women are also suffering from the intensively high prices of food and cash deficit. Especially, since the Iraqi government stopped sending public employees' salaries to areas which it is under control Daesh in the mid-2015. She asserts that women lived in fear of air raids by US-led coalition and Iraqi government forces. Human Rights Watches confirmed the fate of Yezidi women in region, interviewing those forced to flee who cited fear of attack from Daesh and lack of food as reasons for fleeing. On the 12th of August 2014, Dakhil was injured when an Iraqi aid
helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
crashed during a mission to deliver aid to the Yazidi people who were under siege by
ISIL An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
in Sinjar, Mosul. She reportedly broke her leg whilst the Iraqi helicopter pilot lost his life. Dakhil was mistakenly reported dead in an earlier news report.


Awards and honors

Vian Dakhil has been recognised and honoured for her important work in bringing the Yezidi people's plight to the international community. She was congratulated by the Iraqi Parliament, and honoured by the Iraqi Women's Network in October 2014, and was subsequently awarded the title of the Woman of the Year. She is the Winner of the 2014 Anna Politkovskaya Award for her “courage to become the voice of the Yazidi community and by her determination to campaign for the protection of all Yazidi and other Iraqi women under ISIS, despite the danger she is facing as a Yazidi woman politician opposed to ISIS.” She was crowned Woman of the Year in 2015 with an honorary prize for Arabic achievements in Dubai. She received the
Bruno Kreisky Prize for Services to Human Rights The Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights is a biennial award created in October 1976 on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Bruno Kreisky. The laureates are rewarded for their achievements in the field of human rights. The prize was divided in 199 ...
in Vienna, and the Nineveh honorary shield in June 2015. In February 2016 Dakhil was awarded the Geneva Summit Prize for Human Rights in Geneva.


See also

* 2014 Northern Iraq offensive *
List of Yazidi people The following is a list of notable persons of Yazidi descent. A *Ali Atalan, politician * Arab Shamilov, novelist *Amar Suloev, mixed martial artist, hitman *Amin Farhan Jejo, Yazidi politician and author * Ibrahim Khalil, The Yazidi folk sing ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dakhil, Vian 1971 births Living people People from Mosul Members of the Council of Representatives of Iraq Iraqi Yazidis Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents Salahaddin University-Erbil alumni 21st-century Iraqi politicians 21st-century Iraqi women politicians