Yazidi community in Wagga Wagga celebrates New Year. Photo: Ismet Tastan/Rojava Solidarity Sydney
The Yazidi refugee community that has settled in the NSW regional town of Wagga Wagga organised their New Year (Sere Sal) celebration on April 14.
About 170 families settled there after fleeing the 2014 genocide in Shengal, northern Iraq, at the hands of Islamic State militias.
Survivors of the massacre still living in Shengal have organised their own local government and self-defence units with the help of Kurdish freedom fighters from Rojava. But the Iraqi government and the corrupt Barzani regime of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is trying to end this autonomy and dismantle the Yazidi self-defence units.