Don’t you just love the local Armenian media? No sense of how to work properly at all, and once again my images have been taken off the Internet and used without permission or even a credit. Worse than that, the news item by ArmenPress is something that doesn’t reflect the reality behind the story.

YEZIDI PUPILS HAVE THREE TEXTBOOKS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE

YEREVAN, AUGUST 30, ARMENPRESS: When Yezidi schoolchildren in Armenia will go to school on September 1, when academic year here begins, they will find, for the first time, three text-books in their native language. They are the ABC, and textbooks on Yezidi language and literature.

Hasan Tamoyan, head of a radio program broadcast by the Public Radio for Yezidis, said the Union of Yezidis was instrumental in helping to develop and print the textbooks. Yezidis have now media outlets- a 30 minute radio program and an official newspaper run by the Union of Yezidis.

Yezidis, also known as Yezidi Kurds, are Armenia’s largest minority community, numbering officially more than 40,000. Many Yezidis began to settle in Armenia during the Russian-Turkish wars of the 19th century and more fled with Armenians during the massacres of 1915.

Neither Christian nor Muslim, practicing their own ancient rites, the Yezidis stayed when Azerbaijanis and Muslim Kurds fled Armenia at the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute in 1988-90. They keep an ancient nomadic lifestyle and live by breeding cattle and sheep.

As I’ve written before, the language of the Yezidi minority in Armenia is Kurmanji [Kurdish], but the Government has decided to ratify both Yezidi and Kurdish as two separate languages under the European Charter for Minority Languages. So, the lucky Yezidi actually get six books in their own language.

Three books are in “Yezidi,” and the other three will be in Kurdish (Kurmanji). In fact, the language will be the same, but the political slant especially when it comes to the history and origins of the language itself, will be different. And, because some Yezidi who consider themselves Kurds identified themselves as the former in the 2001 census, they’ve already been given the wrong books.

For example, I’ve heard that this has already created problems in some villages around Aragatsotn where schools are refusing to accept books in the “Yezidi” language because they acknowledge that they are ethnic Kurds who are Yezidi by religion and not a separate identity in themselves. This is going to create enourmous problems for the community in the future, but where’s UNICEF in all of this?

Actually, they’re still sitting on a report on minority education that should have been published last Summer. Indeed, I’ve also heard from sources within UNICEF that there other problems emerging because of this split that nobody has the courage or inclination to address. It should also be pointed out that the pro-Kurdish side of the Yezidi community also has their own radio programme and newspaper.

Again, the language is the same while the political orientation is not.

Anyway, my article on the division within the Yezidi minority as to their identity is available here, and an article on minority education is here. Supporting interviews are here.