The systematic genocide of the Yezidi.
It was an upsetting report to watch. What ISIS is doing. Within the context of the report Yezidi women survivors spoke about brutal rapes - daily rapes - gang rapes, men standing in line. Raped in front of their husbands and children, before the husbands were brutally killed. Babies poisoned and killed. How can these women even go on living?
Why?
Sinjar is the ancestral home of a religious minority known as the Yezidis, roughly 5,000 of whom have been murdered by ISIS in a systematic genocide that began in August 2014. Bodies are still being discovered, Logan reports in her story this week, and an estimated 3,000 Yezidis are still being held by ISIS today.
60 Minutes traveled to Sinjar with Father Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest who has dedicated his life to documenting genocides around the world. This time is different, he says. "The challenge now is to stop the genocide, is to try to save people, is to try to carry the voice of the victim, to make people conscious. The killing machine is alive."
Once Sinjar was liberated, Logan and Desbois traveled with Kurdish soldiers into the city, which now lies in ruins. "ISIS chose to go into Sinjar, because it knew that to wipe out the Yezidi culture and history and people, that this was a very powerful place to start," Logan says. - Watch and finish reading here.It was difficult to watch. I closed my eyes, looked at the floor, closed my eyes again as I listened. I thought of the passages from Lamentations, Rachel weeps for her children who are no more.
The French priest, Fr. Desbois, who has dedicated his life to documenting genocides, calls ISIS a killing machine which must be stopped. He sees ISIS as a particularly concentrated form, for lack of a better description - he says they have it down to a science. We keep saying, "Never again!" as regards the Nazi Holocaust - yet it keeps happening and happening with surgical accuracy.
Don't wait for signs and secrets to be revealed - or headlines from the next seer's blog post.
I mention this because there is so much discussion these days about Fatima and the secrets - in anticipation of the Fatima centenary next year. So much concern arising from reports of other apparitions and secrets on hold, and locutionists talking about financial collapse and storms and earthquakes in various places. Yet the Fatima secrets have been revealed - the warnings have been given - and they seem to be unfolding before our eyes ...
We are living it now. People follow mystics and alleged apparitions waiting for the next banal message, yet we already have the formula, the information and instructions we need. As if it isn't enough so many hang onto staged ecstatic performances of conversations with the Madonna. So many seek counsel for the next right step, when in fact we have had all the information we need.
This morning I reflected upon the words, 'various nations will be annihilated'. I think I always expected this warning meant that whole nations would be vaporized in nuclear war. Maybe it does? Yet maybe it refers to genocide. I may be mistaken, but the biblical sense of nations seems to me to refer to peoples, or tribes. God promised to make Israel a great nation - I'm not sure he was referring necessarily to geographical Israel. So in that sense, I wondered if perhaps Our Lady's warning at Fatima referred to other forms of annihilation?
Namely genocide?
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The good are martyred;
the Holy Father does suffer much;
various nations are being annihilated ...
"Look! Don’t you see many roads, paths and fields
full of people crying of hunger, not having anything to eat?
And the Holy Father in a Church
praying next to the Heart of Mary?" - Blessed Jacinta
“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world”. - Vatican
We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:
I understand they have a very ancient and traditional religion and way of life. They are very traditional when it comes to marriage too. I remember when their religious leader met with Papa Francisco in Rome a few months after the war on the Yazidi people was started. They have suffered so much because they too refuse to convert to Islam. I always remember them in my prayers. I believe too, our heavenly Father has a special place in his heart for them.
ReplyDeleteI always remember reading in the CCC that God our Father according to his holy will, can and will save those whose hearts are known only to him. May the Yazidi people be a people close to his heart.
https://www.google.com/search?q=yazidi+women&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAi52jp87MAhWESCYKHe-uDmoQsAQIIQ&biw=1745&bih=868