Lawyer: Armenia always portrays Yezidis as illiterate, dirty, disorganized herdsmen Global Issues report

Global Issues website has published an article in which readers were informed about the problems faced by the Yezidi community in Armenia.

The Yezidi Center for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation founded in 2018, is protecting the rights of Yezidis in Armenia, according to Caliber.Az.

“One of its most active members is Sashik Sultanyan, a 41-year-old lawyer who faces six years in prison for "incitement to hatred". An interview he gave in June 2020 on a Yezidi radio channel in Iraq earned him a complaint from Veto Armenia, a far-right organisation. Someone took care to translate (from Kurdish into Armenian) a conversation in which Sultanyan spoke of “discrimination” towards his people. He denounced that Yezidi lands are being expropriated under legal pretexts and that their linguistic and cultural rights are not respected. The Armenian prosecutor's office speaks of a process "in accordance with national and international law",” the article said.

For its part, Amnesty International has denounced an attack against freedom of expression and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is asking Armenia to withdraw criminal charges they label as "intimidating".

From his office, Sultanyan said that discrimination is “as real as those clichés about his community that television and the media repeat relentlessly”: they are always portrayed as illiterate, dirty and disorganized peasants or herdsmen.

Regarding the issue of the lands, Sultanyan clarifies that "the thieves are the oligarchs, and not the Armenians, as the translation of the interview said". And then there is also the issue of language. Although classes in Kurmanyi are offered at Yezidi children's schools, the subject is not part of the official curriculum.

Moreover, the textbooks are in Cyrillic when the most logical thing, Sultanyan insists, would be to use the Latin alphabet, which is the one used by the Kurds of Türkiye and Syria.

In fact, the first Kurdish-language newspaper, Riya Taze ("New Road"), was founded in Armenia in 1930, but any link between this minority and a neighbouring people, the Kurds, with a population much larger than that of the country, is something that Yerevan does not see with good eyes today.

“When we talk about human rights, we insist that we must be alert on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many do not understand it that way. They reject being a minority because they are afraid that a special status could damage their brotherhood with the Armenians. But brotherhood cannot exist without equality,” Sultanyan added.

The Karabakh war of 2020 has given some visibility to the community. In that 44-day conflict that ended with an overwhelming victory for Azerbaijan, there more than twenty young Yezidis who lost their life in the ranks of the Armenian Army.

One of them was Samad Saloyan. His parents, Yuri and Nina, still live in the Zartonk, one of those villages around the Yezidi temple. The family has turned the living room into some kind of mausoleum erected to the memory of the lost son: there are photos of him as a child, or dressed as a soldier; there´s also a Yezidi flag (white and red with a sun in the centre) as well as set of army medals and others from his sporting victories.

"There is nothing worse than talking about your own child in the past tense," Yuri said. Nina has a hard time getting started until a sea of tears breaks the dam and her words overflow.

Her son was recruited at the age of 18. He was about to graduate when the war broke out, but he was finally mobilized. He survived 42 days of hell until a bomb dropped from a drone killed him and three others.

"It was just two days before the war ended," Nina repeats, caught up in a monologue that runs in a loop, but that always leads to a dead end: Samad is no longer in this world.

The Yezidis believe in transmigration, a chain of reincarnations that serves to purify the spirit until it becomes one with God.

But this is no comfort for the Saloyans. Only when the tears give the first truce is it possible to change the subject. Do they go to the temple? Do they keep Yezidi festivities? "Yes, more or less". And how has the harvest been this year?

Yuri points to the lack of rain, there is no water and the land does not provide anything. Making ends meet has become a real challenge. Moreover, who can assure that another war with Azerbaijan will not break out? Armed incidents are getting increasingly recurrent along the border.

Nina raises her head and searches Yuri with her eyes. They have relatives in Russia. Most likely, she says, they will also leave.