While a large part of city of Şengal (Sinjar) is cleared out of ISIS terrorists and hundreds of terrorists have been killed in clashes with Kurdish guerrilla fighters and Peshmerga-troops by the support of allied air raids, reports on sexual violence against Kurdish Ezidi (Êzidî) girls and women have now been released.
“ Tortures, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, suffered by women and girls from Iraq’s Ezidi minority who were abducted by the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS), highlights the savagery of IS rule ”, said Amnesty International in a news briefing on Tuesday, 23rd December.
Escape from hell: Torture and sexual slavery in the Islamic State captivity in Iraq, provides an insight into the horrifying abuse forced upon hundreds and possibly thousands of Ezidi women and girls. These young women have been forced to convert to Islam, forcibly married, sold and given as “gifts” to IS terrorists or their supporters.
“Hundreds of Ezidi women and girls have had their lives shattered by the horrors of sexual violence and sexual slavery in IS captivity”, says Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor Donatella Rovera, who has been speaking to more than 40 former captives in northern Iraq.
Rovera continues: “Many of those held as sexual slaves are children – girls aged 14, 15 or even younger. IS fighters are using rape as a weapon in attacks amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The women and girls are among thousands of Ezidi from the Sinjar region in north-west of Iraq, a region that´s been targeted since August 2014 in a wave of ethnic and religious cleansing by IS fighters.
The horrors that have been endured by these young women and girls in IS´s captivity have left them so severely traumatized, that some have been driven to end their own lives.
Jilan, a nineteen-year-old Ezidi girl, committed suicide while being held captive in Mosul because she feared she would be raped, explained her brother to Amnesty International.
One of the girls who was held in same room as Jilan and 20 other girls, amongst them two girls at the age of 10 and 12, told Amnesty International: “One day we were given clothes that looked like dance costumes and were told to bathe and wear those clothes. Jilan killed herself in the bathroom. She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful; I think she knew she was going to be taken away by a man and that is why she killed herself.” The girl was among those who later managed to escape.
Wafa, 27, another former captive, explained to Amnesty International how she and her sister attempted to end their lives one night after their captor threatened them with forced marriage. They tried to strangle themselves with scarves but two girls sleeping in the same room woke up in time and stopped them.
“We tied the scarves around our necks and pulled away from each other as hard as we could, until I fainted… I could not speak for several days after that”, Wafa said.
The majority of the perpetrators are Iraqi and Syrian men. Many of them are IS fighters but others are believed to be supporters of the IS terrorist group. Several former captives said they had been held in family homes, where they lived with their captors’ wives and children.
Many of the Ezidi survivors are suffering tremendously on all ends of the consequences this war, as they are also struggling to cope with the loss of dozens of relatives whom either still remain in captivity or have been killed by the Islamic State.
Randa, a 16-year-old girl from a village near Mount Sinjar was abducted together with a large number of family members, including her heavily pregnant mother. Randa was “sold” or given as a “gift” to a man twice her age who had raped her. She describes the impact of her ordeal to Amnesty International: “It is so painful what they did to me and to my family. Da’esh (the IS) has ruined our lives… What will happen to my family? I don’t know if I will ever see them again.”
“The physical and psychological toll of the horrifying sexual violence these women have endured is catastrophic. Many of them have been tortured and treated as chattel. Even those who have managed to escape remain deeply traumatized,” explains Donatella Rovera.
The trauma of survivors of sexual violence is further exacerbated by the stigma surrounding rape. Survivors feel that their “honour”, and that of their families, have been tarnished and fear that their place in society will be diminished as a result.
Many survivors of sexual violence are still not receiving full help and support they desperately are in need of.
Source: www.amnesty.org/en/news/iraq-yezidi-women-and-girls-face-harrowing-sexual-violence-2014-12-23
Provided by Rojhelat.info
