“We didn’t know anything about Australia,” said 17-year-old former Yazidi refugee, Eevet. “We just knew it’s a country in the middle of the oceans.”
It was not long ago that Eevet did not speak a single word of English. It is difficult to imagine now seeing the confident HSC student at Wagga Wagga High School.
Eevet is from the Yazidi community, a religious minority group from Northern Iraq.
In 2014 the Yazidi community suffered multiple genocide and attacks at the hands of the extremist group know as Daesh or ISIS. “They were very brutal towards the Yazidi community,” Eevet explained. “They killed the majority of Yazidi people within the region of Sinjar.”
Sinjar is Eevet’s hometown. Her, and her immediate family, were living in Turkey when ISIS attacked their hometown, but she had relatives that she had left behind. “That includes my uncles, my aunties and my grandmother.”
Many people were able to flee as ISIS moved in, but unfortunately not Eevet’s grandmother. “She couldn’t run,” Eevet said. “She stayed home, and all my uncles and aunties escaped, she told them to leave.”
The militants took Eevet’s grandmother, along with some other female elders, to Syria. “From there, we lost contact with her… and we don't know anything about her.”
It’s been hard for the family to not have any contact. “That's one of the main reasons that my father is having a mental breakdown… he was very close to my grandmother.”
Eevet and her grandmother. Source: Supplied
According to the United Nations the fate of nearly 3,000 kidnapped Yazidi women and girls is still unknown, and dozens of mass graves have yet to be exhumed.
Eevet said it’s very common for Yazidi people who now live in Australia to have family members missing.
Shammo, 55, was at work when his family called him to say ISIS was approaching their village. “I told them to leave the village like everybody else,” he explained. “They left the village, they were captured in Sinjar by ISIS.”
Shammo has four daughters, three of them were kidnapped by ISIS, the whereabouts of his parents, his wife and his three sons is unknown.
In 2015 Shammo was able to secure the release of his first daughter from ISIS after paying $8,000 and in 2017 he was able to secure the release of his second daughter after paying $2,000. Shammo said the Kurdish government, under the leadership of President Nechirvan Barzani, paid for the release of his daughters.
Source: Gavin Blyth
In 2020, after ISIS was defeated, Shammo’s third and oldest daughter was also released with help from the Iraqi government. She has since been living with one of her sisters in a refugee camp in Iraq. “Their lives are very difficult, they live by themselves and there is no assistance for them, no organisation helps them.”
Shammo hopes his two daughters will join him and their two sisters in Wagga Wagga. “My dream is to continue living here, my children to complete their education and each have a profession, this is my dream. And my other dream is for the others to join me here.”
As for his missing family members, Shammo fears they are now dead.
Living in Wagga Wagga
Shammo is grateful to the country that has provided him safety. “Life has to go on,” he said. “What has happened to us will never be forgotten, but with time we will resist it and life will continue.”
Eevet loves living in the regional NSW town of Wagga Wagga. “Everyone knows each other.”
As for her future, Eevet would like to become a doctor.
From War to Wagga Wagga is a digital series that follows the stories of Eevet, Shammo and Dyanna - you can watch all of their stories .
