The Yazidi girl – who wished to remain unnamed ­– became pregnant after being brutally raped by an ISIS fighter. Desperate, she tried to force a miscarriage by throwing herself down a flight of stairs. When she attempted to escape from her abductors, she was re-captured and raped by six men. Kept naked in a room, she was repeatedly sold and raped to groups of men. The more times she was sold, the more her monetary value declined. She was told that she had to be raped to become a Muslim and that it ISIS fighters were simply implementing the Prophet Muhammad’s law.

In the Trafficking Terror report, she revealed how girls were raped together in the same room. Islamic State members would touch the chests of captured girls to see whether they had grown breasts. If they had breasts, they could be raped; if not, they would wait three months to check again.

August marked the five-year anniversary of this reign of terror that would forever change the lives of the Yazidi clan from the Sinjar region in the far northwest of Iraq. A minority group whose gnostic religion stemmed from Zoroastrianism, ISIS theologians labelled them as infidels to justify their tyranny.

When ISIS invaded Sinjar in 2014, most of the men were executed and thousands of women and children were transported to ISIS slave markets. The women and girls were doomed to enter into several yearlong odysseys of violence, slavery, and sexual abuse – being sold again and again to different ISIS fighters – often to as many as ten different men. A report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that some 5,000 Yazidi women have been sold into slavery. To date, almost 3,000 of them still remain missing.

The case management team at YAZDA, a Yazidi global organization established in the aftermath of the Yazidi Genocide in 2014, explained, “The campaign of genocide ISIS began carrying out in 2014 pivots on several major atrocities. One of them was mass executions, which included many men and elderly women who were unable to escape the Sinjar region as ISIS swept through.

“The second is the indoctrination of boys and their training as child soldiers. They were stripped from their families, their traditions and forcibly indoctrinated with extremist ideology before being on the battlefields and elsewhere.

“The third is the sexual slavery of Yazidi women. Thousands of children, teenage girls, and young women were forced into sexual slavery under ISIS.”

In cities such as Mosul and Raqqa – the strongholds of ISIS – there were systemised slave markets where women would be sold off based on their age, virginity, and looks. They were also traded, sold, and rented amongst ISIS members, and sometimes given as gifts from one member to another. The stories of cruelty are unfathomable: stories of women who tried to fight the rape of their young daughters and were then raped themselves in front of their daughters as punishment; stories of forced abortions right after capture so they could be sold off easier; and stories of unyielding circles of violence, exploitation and abuse that left many who survived with severe trauma and high risks of suicide.

“Some girls are believed to have been smuggled out into neighboring countries for human trafficking purposes,” YAZDA added.

“There is also the issue of the al Hol camp in Syria, which houses a significant number of ISIS members. Girls are still there – either brainwashed into staying with ISIS families or potentially held against their will. Given the extremely difficult security situation of the camp, there is not at this stage a pragmatic way to go in and find Yazidi girls until there is some effort to clear out the camps – or the ISIS sections anyway.”

Sexual slavery was frequently used as an incentive for ISIS recruits, with the promise of a conveyor belt of women. In a deeply conformist Muslim culture where casual sex is a taboo, the reward of sex-on-demand became part of ISIS propaganda to entice would-be fighters. Any children born out of the “caliphate” had not only financial merits but were also seen as future ISIS conscripts. Moreover, it has been reported that the ISIS recruitment process became a playing field for rapists, paedophiles, and men with a history of sexual and domestic violence.

Lavan Jalal, a psychotherapist at Jiyan Foundation of Human Rights, has worked since 2015 in Jiyan’s Trauma Clinic – Iraq’s only inpatient psychological clinic. She has treated a large majority of Yazidi women and children who escaped ISIS captivity and remain deeply traumatised. Even more worrisome, are the ones who have not yet been rescued.

“Some girls were killed by ISIS because they tried to escape but no one has reported this,” Jalal said.

“Other women committed suicide. Many still reside in refugee camps in Syria and don’t know if or how they can return to Sinjar. Also, many women had children from their captors as a result of the constant sexual abuse. These children are considered Muslim by Yazidi culture and thus would not be accepted into the Yazidi community. Many women thus face the harrowing choice between returning to their families and leaving their children behind, or staying with their children without returning to their families. In this regard, any attempts to negotiate with the Yazidi community to make exceptions and allow these children into the communities have failed so far.”

The depraved story of the methodical sexual violence towards the Yazidi by ISIS has left a putrid stain. It is one that cannot be washed away until better justice is served for the thousands who are still missing.

“Investigation is needed into unreported deaths and suicides to achieve peace for the families who, until today, remain in the unknown about their relatives,” Jalal insisted.

“Outreach work is needed in the camps in Syria with the women who still live there to try and understand what keeps them from returning. There should be a creation of links between families who are still looking for a relative and women in those camps. And, of course, continue the negotiations with the leaders of the Yazidi community about accepting Yazidi women’s children born in captivity.”

L'articolo The Sex Slave Trade Of The Yazidi Women By Isis proviene da InsideOver.

Zakho, Iraq – Sporting long, white garbs and a long, white beard, an elderly man known as Shamo keeps pictures of his loved ones kidnapped by ISIS in his tent in the Chamishko Camp.

The thousands of Yazidi residents, who are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority in Iraq, came to the camp near the city of Zakho in the Kurdistan Region in 2014 after ISIS overran their home city of Sinjar. The group killed several thousand Yazidis in the process. Although Sinjar was liberated by Kurdish Peshmerga forces in 2015, very few Yazidis have returned to the city. Shamo laments the lack of progress in both getting kidnapped Yazidis back and making Sinjar safe for them to return.

“A solution for those kidnapped by ISIS. This is our first demand,” he said, pictures of the missing people in front of him. “Second, we need international protection from genocide.”

Many residents of Chamishko prefer to live in the camps’ tents, fearing their hometown of Sinjar is not safe from a resurgence of ISIS.

ISIS swept through northern Iraq in 2014, taking Sinjar, as well as Mosul, parts of the Nineveh Plains, and other areas. Backed by air support from the U.S.-led coalition, the Iraqi military, the pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the military of Iraqi Kurdistan the Peshmerga, and other groups retook all of ISIS’ territory by the end of 2017. However, ISIS is still reportedly carrying out attacks in northern Iraq . ISIS especially targeted Yazidis, murdering and enslaving them due to their non-Islamic religious practices.

At present, there are more than 5,000 families in Chamishko Camp , according to the Duhok province’s Board of Relief and Humanitarian Affairs. The residents live in a series of blue and white tents that have plumbing and electricity. Power outages of several hours are common nowadays, as they are in other parts of the country. The tents are about two meters in height, covered in tarps, and reinforced by hard material on their walls.

A lot of Chamishko residents fear Sinjar is not safe years after the liberation. Usman Salih Murad fled with his family in 2014, sleeping on the streets of Duhok for several days before ultimately finding shelter when Chamishko was built. The presence of alleged ISIS supporters near Sinjar is one reason the city remains dangerous, according to him. “People who worked with ISIS have returned,” he said from his tent. “There’s a big fear of this.”

Murad is referring to the resettlement of Arab families in Sinjar who are accused of working with ISIS . He doesn’t want to live among people who may have partaken in the group’s notorious atrocities against Yazidi women.

“We won’t talk to them again,” said Murad. “They took our girls and they raped them.”

Kurdish security forces protect Chamishko, and the greater Zakho region is safe, having been spared the fighting in Mosul two hours away. On the other hand, Turkey carried out an airstrike in Sinjar in August targeting a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader . The strike was part of Turkey’s campaign to fight the PKK, who have long fought the Turkish state, in their areas of operation in northern Iraq.

The security concerns go deeper than alleged ISIS supporters in the area and the conflict with Turkey. There are too many groups competing for power in Sinjar, according to Said Saydu Khaydar.

“The reason is security,” he said on why people are reluctant to return home. “You walk a little way and you see white, yellow, and black flags, and destroyed houses.” Yazidi groups loyal to the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga and Iraq’s PMU have presences in and around Sinjar, in addition to the Iraqi army and the PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by the Turkish government. Sinjar is disputed between the federal Iraqi government and the

Kurdistan Region, and the former retook the city in October 2017 following the Kurdistan Independence referendum.

People from Sinjar note economic and infrastructure problems as well. Khaydar, who visited Sinjar in October, says the city lacks necessities.

“There are no hospitals, the streets are destroyed,” he said. “There are no services.”

Murad and Khaydar are not alone in their thinking. A May 2018 report from the United Nations (UN)’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) named poor security, a lack of economic opportunities, and destroyed homes as reasons Yazidis are unable to return to Sinjar.

Shamo wants to go home despite all that has happened, but says he can only wait and hope at the moment. If Sinjar can’t obtain international protection from foreign powers, then he’ll try to leave Iraq.

“If we can’t get it (protection),” Shamo said, “then open the doors of immigration in general to get out of Iraq.”

L'articolo Yazidis in camps fear return of Isis in home city of Sinjar proviene da InsideOver.