honorable mention
Giacomo Sini italy
Photo © Giacomo Sini
title
An Ezidis' story
back to gallery
entry description
Ezidis are a religious group of about half a million people who is native of the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh. They share the same language and much of the culture of the Kurds of Turkey and Syria. Because of their attachment to a cult of pre-Islamic and gnostic origin they’ve been received years of strong repression. In last three years Ezidis, have been the main targets of ethnic cleansing by IS militiamen, along with Christians and Shiites. Everyone remember their fugue towards the mountains of Sinjar, when IS began a strong offensive in northern Iraq on early August 2014. At that time, IS forces committed a massacre, killing over 5000 Ezides men and kidnapping other thousands of women, sold into slavery in Mosul or Raqqa. The population who survived to the attacks fled in the mountains around Sinjar where it was trapped without food, water or medical care, facing starvation, dehydration and the risk of more incursions by IS for several weeks. Fortunately PKK and YPG Kurdish forces open a corridor towards the mountains to Northern Syria, led by Kurdish forces, in order to make them flee safely. Thousands of Ezidis get safe in Rojava and then travel to Europe on 2015. Some of them were stopped on the border between Greece and Macedonia between 2015-2016 on their fugue towards north. After several months of stoppage, a lot of them decided to return in Iraq, despite the risk and the destrution around the area. Therefore today more than 35.000 people are still living in the heart of the mountain within self-made tents, living close to the same frontline against ISIS since more than 3 years. Ezidis Resistance Units (YBŞ) and other Kurdish militias are laboriously trying to guarantee them the saefty to rebuilt a new project of life.about the photographer
Giacomo Sini was born in Pisa, (Italy) in 1989 but has always been living in Livorno. In 2014 he obtained a degree in social sciences at Pisa University. Freelance Journalist and Photojournalist has passed through fifty countries photographing their social and political realities. Passionate about the Middle East and Central Asia, has photographed many times the realities of conflicts in Syria, Lebanon and Kurdistan. He is interested mostly in refugee's stories, principally from conflict and post conflict areas and in cultural reports. Today he is living in Livorno, (Italy). His works have been published in The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Vice Magazine, El Pais, Stern, L'Express, Humanité Dimanche, Domani, L'Espresso, Corriere del Ticino, NZZ, Die Zeit, Taz, National Geographic, Venerdi Repubblica, D Repubblica, FQ Millennium (Fatto Quotidiano), The New Internationalist, Al Jazeera, Freitag.back to gallery
