Iraqi Witnesses Share Their Traumatic Memories of Daesh Rule for Posterity
Date
3/30/2023 4:20:30 AM
(MENAFN) The people of Iraq may have overcome the reign of terror under the Daesh group, but their traumatic memories of the past still haunt them. Recognizing the importance of preserving these memories for future generations, the Mosul Eye project has launched a research project to record witness testimonies. Omar Mohammed, the founder of the project, gained recognition during the Daesh Regime by sharing news from inside the city via Twitter.
Mohammed believes it is crucial to record the history of the people of Mosul in their own voice. The project has already collected testimonies from several people, including Umm Mohammed, a bereaved mother who lost her son Ahmed to the extremist group in 2015. Her younger son, Mohammed, joined Daesh with a plan to find and liberate Ahmed, but never returned. Both are presumed to have been killed.
The Mosul Eye project has trained 10 students to conduct and film interviews with witnesses, with the youngest being only 10 years old and the oldest being 104. The footage will be kept in the project's archives at Mosul University and George Washington University for future use by researchers and generations to come.
The project aims to show the world how the people of Mosul overcame their traumatic experience. A spokesman for Mosul Eye, Mohannad Ammar, believes that recording these testimonies will ensure that nothing is forgotten. Muslim Hmeid, a 27-year-old law student, who witnessed the Daesh rule, remembers the bloody first week in Sinjar in 2014, which he says is impossible to erase from memory. He recalls how the jihadists targeted the local Yazidi minority and loaded young women and girls into lorries. Many Yazidi villages were emptied, and the women were forced into sexual slavery, while the men were killed.
Hmeid and his family fled to Turkiye when three of his brothers were on the Daesh kill list. However, they later returned to Iraq. He believes that by talking about these topics, they reopen wounds, but the next generation must know what happened. The witness testimonies collected by the Mosul Eye project serve as a reminder of the atrocities committed by Daesh and the need to prevent such tragedies from happening again.
MENAFN30032023000045012476ID1105905565
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.