ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Sunday reaffirmed support for the Yazidi ethnoreligious community in the Kurdistan Region and abroad on the occasion of their midsummer celebration.

Çileya Havînê, or the Peak of Summer festival, is celebrated by the Yazidis annually on August 2 by breaking 40 days of fasting at the holy temple of Lalish, near the town of Shekhan. 

“With the arrival of the summer forty-day festival, we extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes to our Yazidi brothers and sisters in the Kurdistan Region and throughout the world, hoping that this occasion will bring goodness, prosperity, and blessings to all,” Barzani said in a statement. 

“We take this opportunity to reaffirm our unwavering support for the Yazidis and our commitment to standing by their rights and just demands,” the prime minister asserted. 

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani also extended his congratulations on the occasion, stressing that the Region “will always remain a land of coexistence and a homeland for all without distinction.” 

The Yazidis are among the Middle East’s most persecuted minorities and bore the brunt of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) brutality when the jihadists swept across Iraq and Syria in 2014. 

During their campaign, the militants overran the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar, launching a brutal campaign of killings, abductions, sexual assault, and forced conversions of Yazidis. 

More than 5,000 Yazidis were killed in the ISIS campaign, and over 6,000 others, mostly women and children, were abducted and sold into sex slavery.

At least 18 countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Switzerland, have officially recognized ISIS' crimes against the Yazidi community as genocide.