Iraqi Religious Persecution Hits Home in Nebraska
LINCOLN, Neb. — Aug 13, 2014, 6:26 PM ET
By GRANT SCHULTE
Associated Press
Iekhan Safar moved from Iraq to Lincoln for the same reason that hundreds of Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority, came to Nebraska's capital city: to live near family, far from the dangers they've long faced as a persecuted group.
Lincoln has the largest concentration of Yazidis (yah-ZEE-dees) in the United States, and many of them brought their families to the U.S. after receiving visas for serving as translators during the first Gulf War. Now, the city is at the center of a frantic effort to draw attention to the group's plight in northern Iraq, where Yazidis are fleeing from Islamic State militants to escape violence and attempts to convert them to Islam.
Thousands of homeless Yazidi families are packed into a refugee camp on a remote desert Sinjar mountain range near the country's northern border, where there is little access to food, water or shelter. Safar, a 26-year-old mother of three, says her sisters and their children face an uncertain future there. One sister called this week in tears: Her 3-year-old daughter fell off a cliff and died in the rush to escape the extremists.
"I just hope they bring them here. At least they'd be safe," Safar said through tears in her Lincoln apartment. "They don't want (government) help — no Medicaid, food stamps, nothing like that. They'll work hard. They just want their kids to be safe."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/iraqi-religious-persecution-hits-home-nebraska-24969216
