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In June 2014 so-called Islamic State fighters occupied huge areas of Syria and Iraq, entirely overwhelming the Yazidi community who lived at Mount Sinjar. Thousands of Yazidis fled before the advance. Those that fell into IS’s were met with the utmost brutality: men were killed and young women forced into slavery. In a few short weeks, a culture that had existed for thousands of years was brought to the brink of destruction. I Was a Yazidi Slave, BBC 2018
‘Thousands of Yazidi girls were imprisoned. They had the most terrible things done to them.’ ibid. victim
A battalion of Yazidi women are getting ready to fight Isis and I’m going with them. Stacey on the Frontline: Girls, Guns and Isis, BBC 2017
There are an estimated 800,000 Yazidis in the world. All of them live in this part of Iraq. Their religion is not Christian or Muslim; they worship their own God. Isis performed more vicious brutality towards them than any other religious minority. ibid.
I’m in Iraq. I’ve come because of a woman called Shireen. She’s 23 and was forced to be a sex slave for Isis. But now she’s escaped and wants answers. Stacey Dooley: Face to Face with Isis, BBC 2018
In this spot up to 100 women and children were sold at a time. Around 3,000 Yazidis are still missing. ibid.
They [Yazidi women] were saying some of the Isis women were far worse than the men … No-one saw anything apart from an oven. Stacey Dooley for Panorama, Stacey Meets the IS Brides, BBC 2019
‘They were all Yazidis. Women were separated from their children. The bastards then took the young and beautiful women to the edge of the village and killed all the rest.’ Tom Holland, Isis: The Origins of Violence, Channel 4 2017
I will follow anyone …
And remind everyone …
Of enslaved Yazidi women …
Raped …
And forced …
To donate blood to ISIS men … Widad Akrawi
The woman MP from the threatened Yazidis minority who attracted the world’s attention to her people’s plight a year ago with a tear-filled plea to the Iraqi parliament to save them has accused the world of now abandoning them to their fate.
In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the anniversary of the killings by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of thousands of Yazidis around their historic homeland of Mount Sinjar and the capture and mass rape of their women, Vian Dakhil said refugees were being forced to sell their few possessions to buy back girls from the group’s ‘slave markets’.
But thousands of women, girls and children remain captive, despite the aerial bombardment of Isil positions by the US-led coalition, including Britain.
‘The world has forgotten us,’ she said at her family home in Erbil. Her own home in Sinjar town was seized and destroyed by Isil. ‘I know Sinjar was not the first town attacked by Isil, but it was the first to have a mass kidnap.
‘We have a thousand people that no one knows where they are. And yet we are totally forgotten.’ The Telegraph online report 10 August 2015, ‘Yazidis Left to Their Fate in Iraq: The World Has Forgotten Us’
And at Lalish in Iraq a young Yadizi woman goes in search of salvation after being traumatised by recent conflict … The waters of a sacred spring are helping to heal women … Sacred Wonders s1e3, BBC 2019
In the summer of 2014 IS militants swept across northern Iraq. In Sinjar they would go on to commit a massacre, taking thousands of young women like Amshar captive. Almost seven years later much of the region remains in ruins and thousands remain missing. Our World: Yazidi Women: Clearing Sinjar’s Mines, BBC 2021
Every day, she confronts the deadly legacy left hidden by her former captives. ibid.