ISIS distributes Yazidi women as spoils of war, forcing them into sexual slavery
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group abducted women and children from Iraq’s Yazidi minority, distributed them as as spoils of war, and forced them into sexual slavery.
Some of these women then committed suicide.
The group has targeted Yazidis and other minorities in northern Iraq in a campaign that rights group Amnesty International said amounted to ethnic cleansing, murdering civilians and enslaving others for a fate that some captives consider worse than death.
“Many of those held as sexual slaves are children – girls aged 14, 15 or even younger,” Ms Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, who interviewed dozens of former captives, said in a statement.
A 19-year-old named Jilan committed suicide out of fear she would be raped, Amnesty quoted her brother as saying.
A girl who was held with her but later escaped confirmed the account, saying: “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.”
Beautiful
“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.”
Another former captive told the rights group that she and her sister tried to kill themselves to escape forced marriage, but were stopped from doing so.
“We tied... 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,” Miss Wafa, 27, told the rights group.
Amnesty also recounted the story of 16-year-old Randa, who was abducted with her family and raped by a man twice her age.
“It is so painful what they did to me and to my family,” Randa said.
Source: AFP
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