Yazidi Family Abandons EU Dream, Reluctantly Returns to Iraq

Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
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Yazidi Family Abandons EU Dream, Reluctantly Returns to Iraq

Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)

Khari Hasan Kalo peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq. It’s a place he and his family had hoped never to see again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe.

Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the first stop on a journey to the West.

His wife, 30-year-old Zena, had sold her few belongings on the gamble that left the family of six stranded for days in a cold forest on the border of Belarus and Poland. In the end, they returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother, The Associated Press reported.

Yet they say they would do it all again to escape their hopeless life, spent in a camp for displaced persons for the past seven years. The Kalos are Yazidis, a religious minority that was brutalized by ISIS militants when they overran northern Iraq in 2014.

At the time, ISIS extremists rampaged through the Yazidi town of Sinjar and surrounding villages and destroyed religious sites. They kidnapped and enslaved thousands of women and children. Years after their lives were torn apart, Yazidis are still unable to return home or locate hundreds of women and children who had been snatched by the extremists. The Kalos’ home lies in ruins.

“If it wasn’t for my children and my mother, I would never have returned, I would have stayed in that forest at all costs rather than return to this tent,” Kalo said Friday, speaking to The AP from the Karbato camp in Dohuk province in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. His mother, looking frail, slept throughout the interview.

The Kalos, including three children ages 5, 7, and 9, had returned from Belarus a day earlier.

“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”

The region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, yet Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer. Even in Iraq’s more prosperous north, growing unemployment and corruption is fueling migration, and the Yazidi community has endured particular hardship.

On Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union. The repatriation came after thousands of migrants became stuck at the Poland-Belarus border amid rising tensions between the two countries.

Kalo’s family was among 430 people who flew from Minsk back to Iraq, where 390 got off at Irbil International Airport before the flight continued to Baghdad.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns to destabilize the EU in retaliation for its sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime following a harsh crackdown on internal dissent. Belarus denies engineering the crisis, which has seen migrants entering the country since summer, lured by easy tourist visas, and then trying to cross into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all EU members.

Kalo didn’t mind if a geopolitical game was being played at his expense if it got his family out of Iraq.

“So what if I was a pawn in someone’s hands if it gets me to Germany?” he said.

Since being displaced, the family had gotten increasingly desperate. Their tent burned down in an accidental fire in June that ravaged the Sharia camp, also in Dohuk. They tried to return to their original home in Sinjar but found their house uninhabitable.

Tensions also were simmering in the area between a patchwork of rival militia groups, Iraqi forces, and members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an insurgent group outlawed by Turkey. Turkish jets still targeted PKK members in northern Iraq.

Then he heard from friends about Kurds finding their way to Germany after Belarus eased visa requirements last spring. He begged his brother in Australia to wire him $9,000 to pay the smugglers’ asking price for his wife, three young children and mother.

He also had saved money from his time as a policeman — cash that was hard-won because he endured discrimination as a Yazidi. Colleagues refused to eat or share a room with him, he said. He asked for a reassignment, but his superior said this would only be possible if he gave him half his income.

“What good is a job if its still not enough to feed your family?” he said of his decision to quit.

The Kalos took the land route to Istanbul in September, and boarded flights to Minsk the following month. There, they headed straight to the Polish border. With two other Iraqi families, the Kalos dug under the border fence, reaching the other side in darkness.

They walked for four days in search of a GPS point where they were promised a car would meet them and take them straight to Germany.

But that never happened..

Instead, on the fourth day, Kalo’s family ran out of food as temperatures dropped in the dense and soggy forest.

Polish authorities found them and sent them back across the border. They were greeted by an encampment of hundreds of migrants. Belarusian authorities were handing out wire cutters and pushing the migrants back through the razor wire.

Polish authorities used water cannons to repel them. But this did not deter Belarusian authorities, who beat and threatened them, Kalo said. He said they shouted: “Go (to) Poland!”

Still, husband and wife fought to stay, agreeing that anything was better than their life in a tent.

But with his mother struggling to survive as conditions grew increasingly squalid, Kalo sought the pity of the Belarusian authorities. They allowed them to return to Minsk to seek medical help.

Kalo heard the Iraqi government had agreed to repatriate citizens free of charge. He turned to his wife and they considered their choices: Return to their desperate lives in Iraq, or bear the responsibility if his mother died.

Reluctantly, they put their names on the list.

But their hope is not lost, Kalo said, as his 5-year old daughter, Katarin, dug her face into his chest at the Karbato camp.

“I have two priorities now,” he said. “The first (is) to get a tent of our own. The second, to get back on my feet and leave this country. I will make it this time.”

He added: “If it was my last day on this Earth, I will spend it trying to leave.”



Things to Know About the UN Special Rapporteur Sanctioned by the US

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
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Things to Know About the UN Special Rapporteur Sanctioned by the US

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

A UN special rapporteur was sanctioned by the United States over her work as an independent investigator scrutinizing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, a high-profile role in a network of experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Francesca Albanese is among the experts chosen by the 47-member council in Geneva. They report to the body as a means of monitoring human rights records in various countries and the global observance of specific rights.

Special rapporteurs don't represent the UN and have no formal authority. Still, their reports can step up pressure on countries, while their findings inform prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and other venues working on transnational justice cases.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement announcing sanctions against Albanese on Wednesday that she “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”

Albanese said Thursday that she believed the sanctions were “calculated to weaken my mission.” She said at a news conference in Slovenia that “I’ll continue to do what I have to do.”

She questioned why she had been sanctioned — “for having exposed a genocide? For having denounced the system? They never challenged me on the facts.”

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, called for a “prompt reversal” of the US sanctions. He added that “even in face of fierce disagreement, UN member states should engage substantively and constructively, rather than resort to punitive measures.”

Prominent expert

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has developed an unusually high profile as the special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, a post she has held since May 2022.

Last week, she named several large US companies among those aiding Israel as it fights a war with Hamas in Gaza, saying her report “shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many.”

Israel has long had a rocky relationship with the Human Rights Council, Albanese and previous rapporteurs, accusing them of bias. It has refused to cooperate with a special “Commission of Inquiry” established following a 2021 conflict with Hamas.

Albanese has been vocal about what she describes as a genocide by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel and the US, which provides military support to its close ally, have strongly denied the accusation.

‘Nothing justifies what Israel is doing’

In recent weeks, Albanese issued a series of letters urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip. She also has been a strong supporter of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegations of war crimes.

Albanese said at a news conference last year that she has “always been attacked since the very beginning of my mandate,” adding that criticism wouldn't force her to step down.

“It just infuriates me, it pisses me off, of course it does, but then it creates even more pressure not to step back,” she said. “Human rights work is first and foremost amplifying the voice of people who are not heard.”

She added that “of course, one condemned Hamas — how not to condemn Hamas? But at the same time, nothing justifies what Israel is doing.”

Albanese became an affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University in 2015, and has taught and lectured in recent years at various universities in Europe and the Middle East. She also has written publications and opinions on Palestinian issues.

Albanese worked between 2003 and 2013 with arms of the UN, including the legal affairs department of the UN Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, and the UN human rights office, according to her biography on the Georgetown website.

She was in Washington between 2013 and 2015 and worked for an American nongovernmental organization, Project Concern International, as an adviser on protection issues during an Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Member of a small group

Albanese is one of 14 current council-appointed experts on specific countries and territories.

Special rapporteurs, who document rights violations and abuses, usually have renewable mandates of one year and generally work without the support of the country under investigation. There are rapporteurs for Afghanistan, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Russia and Syria.

There also are three country-specific “independent experts,” a role more focused on technical assistance, for the Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia.

Additionally, there are several dozen “thematic mandates,” which task experts or working groups to analyze phenomena related to particular human rights. Those include special rapporteurs on “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” the human rights of migrants, the elimination of discrimination against people affected by leprosy and the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children.