Raising cash to bring Yazidi family to city

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This article was published 18/07/2015 (4100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Almost a year after being stuck for days on Mount Sinjar surrounded by Islamic State terrorists, a Yazidi family is preparing to come to Winnipeg.

The five children and their parents belong to one of the world’s oldest ethnic minorities, the Yazidis. They made headlines last summer after thousands were chased by violent extremists from their homes in northern Iraq onto the craggy desert mountain.

Now they’re in a refugee camp in Turkey awaiting paperwork they need to fill out to eventually join their relatives in Winnipeg, said Nafiya Naso. Her husband’s older brother, Shivan Hassan, and his family are being sponsored to come to Winnipeg, which has an estimated 200 Yazidis. Naso said it could take from six to 18 months for them to arrive in Canada. In the meantime, the family is barely surviving.

“The humanitarian aid they get is very, very little,” said Naso, who’s anxious for the family with five kids ranging in age from seven to 18-year-old twin daughters to come to Canada.

“There’s no schools for the kids who stay home all day. They do nothing,” said Naso.

She said they aim to raise $34,000 to sponsor the family and provide them with support for one year. So far, they have $26,000 — mostly from the group Friends of Israel that approached the Yazidi community wanting to help, said Naso.

They are privately sponsoring the Hassan family through the Mennonite Central Committee, which sponsored Naso and her family to go to Morden, when she was a little girl.

Calvary Temple is collecting the money to support the Yazidi family and issuing charitable income tax receipts to donors, she said.

Hassan did farming, construction and restaurant work in the small city close to Mount Sinjar, where the family lived, said Naso. She last saw them during visits to northern Iraq in 2006 and 2008.

The family of seven — with four daughters and a son — has had a perilous, difficult time as refugees chased out of their home by violent extremists, said Naso.

“They left their home on Aug. 3 and were stuck on Mount Sinjar for six days.” They were among 40,000 Yazidis who faced dehydration and death from exposure on the mountain and worse if they went down to where the terrorists had surrounded them. Naso said they survived thanks to aid from western countries dropped on the mountain, then support from Kurdish fighters that allowed them to escape. But their struggle wasn’t over.

“They walked a very long distance into Kurdistan,” and arrived at a refugee camp in the city of Duhok, Naso said. On June 26, they were moved to a refugee camp in Turkey, she said.

“It’s really hard. The tents are crowded. They all share one tent and 18 families share one bathroom and one shower.”

Now they are waiting to come to Canada and start a new life in peace. Naso said they are $8,000 short of their goal to meet the $36,000 they need to sponsor the family.

Tax-deductible donations can be sent to Calvary Temple, c/o Friends of Ezra fund, 440 Hargrave St. Winnipeg R3C 2H6 or online www.canadahelps.org/dn/4455.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca