In a letter sent in April 2016, Heidi with over hundred colleagues of the European Parliament asked the high representative Federica Mogherini to recognise Daesh’s genocide against religious minorities, including the Yazidi. On 13 December, two Yazidis, Nadia Murad and Lamya Haji Bashar, survivors of Daesh’s horrors, are awarded European Parliament’s Sakharov prize for freedom of thought.

The Sakharov prize is a way for the European Parliament to ring the alarm bell for the minorities besieged and killed by Daesh, especially the women and girls there. The EU itself hasn’t yet called it a genocide, while the US and the United Nations have. High representative Mogherini is yet to answer the letter.

MEPs letter to HR Mogherini on 22 April 2016