ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A group of Yazidis who fled Iraq have been stuck on the Poland-Belarus border for a week with nothing to eat, according to their families. They are among hundreds of migrants caught up in a dispute between European nations and Belarus. “Thirty-two Yazidi migrants are stranded on the border between #Belarus and #Poland for 7 days now. These are Yazidi families from Sinjar [Shingal]. This is a life threatening situation,” Murad Ismael, president and co-founder of Sinjar Academy, tweeted on Tuesday, calling on Poland to allow them entry on humanitarian grounds. A relative of the group said they don’t have food and water and are in a desperate state. “They have been in the forest for seven days and seven nights. They haven’t eaten anything. There’s no food for them and they’re on the brink of death. Five or six of them are in dire condition. They don’t know when they will die,” Fadel Hassan told Rudaw English by phone from Germany. Eleven of his relatives are stranded on the border. “Sometimes they eat leaves, but they can’t eat a lot because it’s hard on the stomach,” he said. For water, they drink from a pond. Thousands of migrants, mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan, and African nations, have tried to gain entry to European Union nations from Belarus this summer. The EU has accused Minsk of pushing migrants to their borders in protest of sanctions imposed in response to a crackdown on dissent. Poland has declared a state of emergency on their border and said it has found evidence of links to extremism on the phones of some migrants. The European Court of Human Rights on August 25 ruled Poland and Latvia must provide the migrants with food, water, clothing, medical care, and temporary shelter if possible, but does not require them to let the migrants cross into their territory. Six people, including at least one Iraqi, have died on Poland’s border since August. Hassan said his relatives want to be allowed to enter Poland in order travel to Germany, or stay in Belarus, “as long as they don’t die.” He fled Shingal to Germany after Islamic State (ISIS) militants took over the Yazidi heartland in northern Iraq in August 2014, committing genocide against the minority community. ISIS militants systematically killed men and older women, and enslaved younger women and children. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. Today, 2,760 people are still missing, according to statistics from the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter on Mount Sinjar, then later in camps in the Kurdistan Region or abroad. Seven years later, most are still living in the camps, unable to go home because of insecurity and lack of reconstruction. Life in the camps is hard, exposed to the elements and the risk of fire, and suicide rates are high. “Iraq has gotten really bad, especially for Yazidis. Yazidis can’t live in Iraq to be honest,” said Hassan, saying Shingal is “not safe” to return to. Baghdad and Erbil reached an agreement on Shingal a year ago, laying out a roadmap to secure the town by expelling the various armed groups with allegiances to Iranian-backed militias and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and creating a force that recruits from local populations. The deal has yet to be fully implemented. Murad Ismael called on the international community to help Yazidis in their homeland. “Continued failure will result in more risky migration like this one,” he tweeted.
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