Girls, Women Sold Into Sexual Slavery By Militants

Many girls from the Yazidi community
in Iraq are committing suicide after
being raped and sold into sexual
slavery by Isis fighters who captured
them last August. And some 200 Yazidis,
held prisoner for five months before
being freed at the weekend because
they were sick or old , report continuing
mistreatment of those still captive.


“They are very bad people,” said Gawre
Semo, 69, who reached the Kurdish-held
town of Altun Kupri. “They took our
children and they took our women.”
A surprise Isis offensive in August led
50,000 Yazidis to flee into territory held
by the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG).


But an unknown number,
amounting to many thousands, were
massacred or detained while many
women were raped or
sold as slaves.
Isis claims that such treatment of the
Yazidis, whose ancient religion is
drawn from Islam, Christianity and
Zoroastrianism and who Isis call
apostates, is permissible under Sharia
law.


Some 300 women who have escaped
from Isis-held territory have given
accounts to Amnesty International
about how they were raped and sold as
slaves. They say many of the victims
killed themselves . One girl, 20-year-old
Luna, who later escaped, described how
Jilan, 19, had committed suicide: “We
were 21 girls in one room, two of them
were very young, 10-12 years. One day
we were given clothes that looked like
dancing costumes and were told to
bathe and wear these 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.”


Arwa, 16, was abducted from her
village south of Mount Sinjar in August
along with hundreds of relatives and
neighbours. She described how she was
moved around between Syria and Iraq
until finally she was held in a house in
Rambussi south of Sinjar with five other
girls. She says: “They did to me what
they did to many other girls. I was
raped… The men were all Iraqis. They
said that if we killed ourselves they
would kill our relatives.”


Despite these threats, many girls do kill
themselves, or try to do so. The Amnesty
International report Escape from Hell:
Torture and Sexual Slavery in Islamic
State Captivity in Iraq describes how
Wafa, 27, and her sister tried to kill
themselves with scarves around their
necks after being told they were to be
sold as slaves. She said: “We tied
scarves around our necks and pulled
away from each other, until we
fainted.” Wafa and her sister survived
only because two other girls sleeping
the same room woke up and stopped
their attempted suicide.


At least 200 people from the minority
Yazidi group have been released from
captivity by Isis fighters (AP)


“Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls
have had their lives shattered by the
horrors of sexual violence and sexual
slavery in captivity,” says Donatella
Rovera, an Amnesty crisis response
adviser who spoke to 40 former
captives. “Many of those held as sexual
slaves are children – girls aged 14, 15 or
even younger.” Captives are often
forced to convert to Islam.