Appeals by Yazidi Women Survivors of ISIS Sex Slavery Unanswered
"For six years we've been asking for help but no one is coming to help us. Unfortunately, there are only empty promises and false hopes." "As Yazidi survivors, we feel we're alone, everyone has forgotten us. We have the right to live like everybody else." "In my youth, I built big dreams and planned for a bright future. But now my future is lost and I don't know what will happen." Nesreen Rasho, 25, Mam Rashan refugee camp, Amman, northern Iraq
"Yazidis deserve peace and security, they deserve justice and accountability." "Survivors cannot wait another six years for the world to act." Nadia Murad, Nobel laureate, human rights campaigner
"We shouldn't have to keep asking for action. There is neglect from the international community and on the local level also toward survivors who are living in dire conditions." Saib Khidir, Iraqi parliamentary Yazidi representative
"I said [at the United Nations Yazidi massacre commemorative event] that if we don't act now, it may be too late, because ISIS fighters held in makeshift prisons in Syria were at risk of escape." "The escapes that we feared took place, with hundreds of prisoners reportedly walking free from ISIS camps last October." Amal Clooney, lawyer representing Yazidis
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| Dalal, left and Dilveen, right, reunite in northern Iraq, five years after they were torn apart at an ISIS slave market. |
Living in refugee camps in northern Iraq, an unstable, frustrating existence, trauma is widespread among the survivors biding their time there. Nesreen Rasho had been taken to Syria, forced there to renounce her faith and adopt Islam, she was sold as a sex slave twice to ISIS men who abused her. When she attempted to escape her ordeal, she was severely punished, and contemplated escape from the reality of her victimhood by suicide.
Declining to give her name, a 31-year-old Yazidi woman at the refugee camp stated that "Some of my family members are still missing. Today we're still living in fear and worry. We need safety and protection." Describing witnessing a relative being executed in the 2014 Sinjar attack by ISIS terrorists. Another woman, a teenage survivor living in another Iraq refugee camp suffered for five years in slavery following her abduction as a child, along with her mother and siblings.
Ronia estimated she had been sold over ten times during that time, recalling her mother beaten before her as she was forced to watch, helpless to react. The "most painful moment" in her life took place the day she was separated from her mother and siblings, each sold separately. "I had no idea where my mother was, was she dead?", 15-year-old Ronia said. Her final owner had allowed her to leave during a ceasefire, last year.
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| An internally displaced person (IDP) camp in Northern Iraq is home to 9,000 Yazidis. |
She discovered later that her parents found asylum in Canada, planning herself to make application to join them there. At a UN event commemorating the massacre that took place at Sinjar mountain in Iraq, where the Yazidi community lived, lawyer Amal Clooney had asked the Security Council to bring ISIS to justice. A year has passed, with no action taken. Ms.Clooney had wanted the International Criminal Court to be authorized to put ISIS members on trial; alternately that a court be created with a treaty between Iraq and the U.N.
And though Iraq's President Barham Salih had announced he hoped parliament would shortly pass a bill promising financial compensation, education, housing and employment support to Yazidi survivors of sexual slavery, Nasreen Rasho feels unsafe in Iraq, compelling her to apply for resettlement in Australia. Thousands of suspected Islamic State members have gone on trial in Iraq and European nations such as Germany and France have initiated trials against ISIS terrorists who had returned to their European homes.
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| Freed Yazidi sex slaves burn their discarded burqas |
Labels: Inhumanity, ISIL, Yazidis
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 17, 2020
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