Islamic State militants have released video of hundreds of Yazidi men converting to Islam under threat of death.
The disturbing video shows several hundred men gathered in a hall that has been hung with the distinctive black flag of the Islamic State militants.
The video, which was released by the militants yesterday, also shows them embracing the Islamic extremists and praying in the traditional Islamic style.
The Daily Mail translated the words of an unseen militant running the conversion ceremony.
“Right now you are infidels. After this you will become Muslims and you will have rights,” the unseen man states.
Later in the video, an unnamed Islamic State member denounces the Yazidis.
“We advise and please with the Yazidis to come down from the mountains, and convert to Islam — firstly to rid themselves of the fires of hell in the end, and secondly, if they remain on the mountain, they will die of hunger and thirst,” he says.
The mountain he refers to is Mount Sinjar, where up to 40,000 Yazidis fled after militants began their uprising in northern Iraq. More than 300 of them died while trapped on the mountain, a refugee doctor stated.
Australia joined the US and other nations in dropping humanitarian supplies to the people stranded on the mountain.
This aid is dismissed as “a lie” by the speaker in the video.
Yazidis have long been persecuted for their religion (which has links to Zoroastrianism) because one of its main holy beings — the “Peacock Angel” — is a complex figure capable of both good and evil. This duality has seen the Yazidis dubbed “devil worshippers” by members of other faiths.
Shiite muslims also being targeted
But the Yazidis are not the only religious minority facing persecution in Iraq.
Members of a minority Iraqi Shiite community whose town has been besieged by Sunni militants appealed to Iraq’s military and the international community to intervene to end the siege.
The siege of the northern town of Amirli, populated by Shiite Turkmens, is part of a wide onslaught by militants and their Sunni allies who have seized large swaths of western and northern Iraq.
Lawmaker Fawzi Akram al-Tarzi, a Turkmen, said nearly 15,000 Shiite Turkmens in Amirli, about 105 miles (170 kilometers) north of Baghdad, have been besieged for the past two months by militants affiliated with the Islamic State.
The siege has left the residents in a dire situation, although the army air-dropped some weapons, food and medical supplies recently. The town has no water or electricity, yet the residents are putting up a fierce resistance, al-Tarzi added.
“Amirli is besieged from all sides and calls for help are falling on deaf ears,” he said, urging the U.S. to consider airstrikes on militant targets around the town.
Resident Jaafar Kadhim al-Bayati, a 41-year-old father of three, told the Associated Press over the phone that children in Amirli are getting sick and that the town needs more help.
“We are starving, we ran out of food and the only clinic is not functioning now due to lack of medicines,” he said. He added that a pregnant woman died while in labor this week, after she was brought to the clinic but there was no one there to help her.
Like other religious minorities in Iraq such as Christians and Yazidis, the Turkmen community has also been targeted by the Islamic State, which considers them to be apostates.