A book promotion event took place in Italy on Friday where donations and the proceeds of the tickets sold were donated to the Kurdistan Red Crescent (Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê) in an act of solidarity with the 6 February earthquake victims in Syria. The two books promoted during the event tell the tragedy of the Yazidis massacred by ISIS in the Shengal (Sinjar) region of northern Iraq in 2014.
Comic book No Sleep Till Shengal by the prominent Italian cartoonist Michele Rech, known as Zerocalcare, and the book La Montagna Sola (Lonely Mountain) written by the il Manifesto author Chiara Cruciati and Rojbin Beritan, were promoted on Friday in the northern Italian cities of Padova and Rovigo.
Around 1,000 people in Padova and 800 in Rovigo attended the events organised by Ya Basta Êdî Bese Association and Rete Kurdistan Polesine (Polesine Kurdistan Network). The book event in Rovigo was held twice throughout the day due to a great demand for tickets.
The event also saw the screening of a documentary in memory of Italian anarcho-communist Lorenzo Orsetti (also known as Tekoşer), who lost his life on 18 March 2018 fighting against ISIS alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces during the Rojava revolution in north and east Syria.
On 26 May 2021, a group consisting of various unions, associations, journalists, intellectuals and a cartoonist from Italy visited Shengal and the Maxmûr refugee camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq under the association Verso il Kurdistan (Toward Kurdistan) and despite intense obstacles, they managed to make a week-long visit.
Only a delegation of two from the group was able to visit the Maxmûr camp, where they delivered medical aid. Italian intellectuals were able to enter Shengal after four days of blockades.
The books prepared after this visit and describing the experiences of Yazidis have been promoted in several different cities in Italy and attracted the attention of Italian readers.
The ISIS attacks against Yazidis were carried out in the Shengal region of northern Iraq in 2014, starting on 3 August. ISIS overran the Yazidi land, forcing young women into sexual and domestic servitude for ISIS fighters, massacring thousands of people and displacing Yazidis in the area. ISIS was eventually removed from the area on 13 November 2015.
