YEREVAN. - By their path covered, Yezidis earned their right to live and create in Armenia, President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) History Institute Ashot Mekonyan said Thursday at the unveiling ceremony of the Yezidi genocide memorial in Yerevan’s Circle Park.   

“By your path covered and your living in our homeland, you earned the right to live and create on this land. In 1918-20 your people gave us such political figure as Usub Bek and military figure Jahangir Agha. And today you gave us Kyaram Sloyan who fought by his captain Armen Urfanyan to the death. The same ISIL, which fought against us today in Artsakh, knew that that soldier was Yezidi. They treated him as brutally as with the representatives of his nation in 2014,” he said.

In August 2014, the Yezidi population in Sinjar province of Iraq was exterminated en masse by the militants of the Islamic State terrorist organization.