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| Iraq |
| Yazidi Women Tell of Rape and Enslavement at Hands of ISIS |
| 2015-11-30 |
| KHANKE CAMP, Iraq -- The grandmother lifted her face to heaven and let out a high wail. "I pray for this hell to end," the 64-year-old said before crumpling onto the floor of her hut. Kimy Hassan Sayfo's daughters and granddaughters have been held captive by ISIS. Two daughters recently escaped but extremist fighters have kept her young granddaughters "for themselves," she said. Her story echoes those of countless others across this vast tent city full of Yazidis, a tiny and ancient religious minority reviled and persecuted by ISIS. More than 3,000 women and girls were taken captive when ISIS attacked ancestral Yazidi villages around northwestern Iraq's Sinjar Mountain in August 2014. Nearly half-a-million people have been displaced since, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government's Yazidi Affairs Directorate. Today, community leaders say around 2,000 women and girls are still being bought and sold in ISIS-controlled areas. The young become sex slaves and older women are beaten and used as house slaves, according to survivors and accounts from ISIS militants. The women and children were held in a school where, she said, the guards would come at night to take away women and rape them. ISIS has published documents justifying the enslavement of Yazidis as spoils of war, and activist Khider Domle has interviewed dozens of women and girls who have fled their captivity. "Every time a woman escapes we learn more about how they are using Yazidi women," he said. Domle said the women, especially those who end up in ISIS strongholds in Syria, tend to be traded or sold three or four times as fighters move to different locations and leave the women behind. "Some are sold for weapons, or for just $10, or 10 cigarettes," Domle said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |