From witnesses to ISIS genocide, a call to action

If a genocide were happening right now, would the world stand by and watch or be able to do something about it?

That was one of the central, troubling questions posed by two speakers who have recently been in Iraq documenting the mass murder of Yezidis and the persecution of other minorities at the hands of the Islamic State.

Naomi Kikoler, the deputy director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, a freelance photographer base in Istanbul, spoke Tuesday night at Florida Atlantic University about their experiences of interviewing and photographing hundreds of victims of the Islamic State’s atrocities in Iraq and Syria.

Kikoler and Knowles-Coursin shared harrowing stories and images they collected in Northern Iraq, where minorities including Yezidis, Christians, Shiites and Kurds have been victims of ISIS. The Washington, D.C.-based museum in November released a related report underscoring crimes against Iraqi minorities. The museum also called for U.S. intervention and said the mass murder of Yezidis by ISIS constitutes genocide – a term the museum does not use lightly or often.

Kikoler, a human rights lawyer raised in Canada, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. “I believe that we can envision a future where young children don’t have to grow up listening to the stories I grew up hearing,” Kikoler told the audience at FAU. “We’re trying to ensure that ‘never again’ really means never again. So we do these bearing-witness trips to try to document situations where people are either at risk of genocide or are fleeing genocide – to shed light and call for action.”

She notes that there were indications that ISIS would go after the Yezidis, adherents to an ancient Middle Eastern religion, as well as Shiites, Christians and other non-Muslim minorities. “There were warning signs that were ignored,” added Kikoler, “because these particular communities were not a priority.”

Knowles-Coursin told students at FAU – some of them interested in a future in journalism – that they should pursue the kind of work he does only if they feel called to bear witness.

“Photography is an excuse to enter the lives of others, and displacement and migration are some of the most extreme, concentrated examples of this,” said Knowles-Coursin. “It’s very compelling to be able to witness that. Also, in doing work on a project like this, it’s a bit different than journalism – it’s less about using someone’s story because it happens to fit into your own narrative – these stories we collected are the narrative.”

Photo by Levi Clancy on Unsplash