Mam Beşîr, a great loss for the Yazidi community

Mam Beşîr lived in Germany for many years, where he and Mam Zekî had been involved in the defense and organization of the Yazidi community since the early 1980s. After the ISIS attack, he went to Shengal, where he passed away.

A message that affects the coordination of the Yazidi community very much, and a great loss for the population of Shengal: with Mam Beşîr, the Yazidis are not only losing an outstanding personality, but also a tireless promoter of the Yazidi existence and self-defense. Mam Beşîr passed away on Monday suffering from a fatal heart attack on Mount Shengal. The coordination of the Yazidi community expresses its sincere condolences to its relatives and the Kurdish people.

Mam Beşîr's real name was Hasan Dutar. He was born in 1956 in a village in the northern Kurdish province of Batman. Like many other Yazidi families, Mam Beşîr's family too was oppressed by Turkish fascism and driven from its homeland. In 1970 they settled in the Federal Republic of Germany.

At the age of 27, Mam Beşîr and a group of friends, including Mam Zekî Şengalî, who fell a martyr on 15 August 2018 in a targeted attack by the Turkish air force near Koço, began to defend and organize the Yazidi community.

He was one of the co-founders of the "Yazidi Democratic Freedom Movement" (TEVDA), which was launched in 2003 and, some time after the genocide of his community in Shengal in August 2014, he went to South Kurdistan to take a leading role in the reorganization of the population and to take over the development of their own autonomous structures. “He worked day and night to ensure that the members of his people, all of whom he regarded as his family, stay in Shengal and organize themselves. He followed in the footsteps of his companion Mam Zekî and is now united with him,” says the Shengal Yazidi Coordination.

Mam Beşîr leaves six children behind.