Hengaw strongly condemns pro-state cleric’s threats of genocide and murder against Yazidis
The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights strongly condemns recent statements by Ramin Salehzadeh, a cleric in Baneh affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a publicly circulated video, Salehzadeh explicitly threatens to murder Yazidis and calls for violence against the community. Hengaw warns of the dangerous consequences of these statements and the risk of a repetition of the Yazidi genocide in Kurdistan.
Salehzadeh’s shocking remarks, reproduced below, not only threaten Yazidis but amount to a call for their genocide:
“Yazidis, we consider you infidels. Yazidis, we consider you impure. Yazidis, we consider you unchaste. By God, if we are given even the slightest opportunity, we will not allow you to live on this earth for a single moment,” he said.
“This is our religion. We do not conceal it from anyone, we do not hide ourselves, we fear no one, and there is no fear in our hearts. We will die only once, so let that death be in the path of God. We die only once, and of the two days God has given us, let both be sacrificed for God’s religion. Let both be sacrificed for one command of the Messenger of God,” Salehzadeh added.
Hengaw stresses that these statements cannot be justified merely as religious disagreement or freedom of expression. Directly threatening an entire community with death, particularly when the threat comes from someone with a religious platform and standing, constitutes clear incitement to genocide and a direct threat to the lives and security of the community’s members.
The gravity of these threats is heightened when viewed in the context of the Yazidi community’s historical experience. In 2014, the Yazidi community was subjected to one of the most horrific genocides of the modern era. Drawing on hate propaganda and extremist religious interpretations, ISIS killed thousands of Yazidis, enslaved numerous women and children, and displaced tens of thousands. The Yazidi genocide demonstrated that hate speech, dehumanization, and threats of violence against a religious community can, when normalized, lead to mass atrocities and organized genocide.
Hengaw therefore warns against any attempt to normalize such rhetoric or create conditions conducive to another genocide of Yazidis. The Yazidi community is a historic, indigenous, and inseparable part of Kurdistan society. No individual, religious movement, or political institution has the right to impose religious criteria to deprive Yazidis of their right to life, security, and human dignity.
Given that Salehzadeh is considered a member of the region’s intelligence forces, Hengaw also warns of official inaction, structural discrimination against religious minorities, and the significant intersection of such discrimination with oppression based on ethnic and national identity in Iran. Hengaw declares that, by failing to confront hate speech and incitement to genocide, the Islamic Republic of Iran bears direct responsibility for the lives and security of the Yazidi community and Iran’s religious, ethnic, and national minorities, particularly followers of the Yarsan faith.
Hengaw specifically calls on human rights bodies and international organizations to monitor with heightened urgency the distinct and vulnerable situation of the people of Kurdistan, particularly the risk of genocide and the threats facing the Yazidi community. The Yazidi genocide demonstrated that a delayed international response to escalating hate can carry irreparable consequences.
Hengaw also calls on religious leaders, civil society institutions, and social and political activists in Kurdistan not to remain silent in the face of these grave threats and to affirm explicitly the Yazidis’ equal right to security, dignity, identity, and a life of freedom. In particular, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights urges Kurdish political parties to take a clear and decisive stand against threats of genocide targeting Yazidis in Iranian Kurdistan.
Kurdistan is the shared home of all its historic communities and embodies the diversity of identities within it. Defending the security and right to life of Yazidis means defending the principles of coexistence and Kurdistan’s historic diversity.
While strongly condemning these threats, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights affirms that it will document and pursue cases of incitement to genocide and violence against the Yazidi community with particular urgency. Hengaw calls on the international community not to remain indifferent to this alarming trend.
