Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a 21-year-old Iraqi woman of the Yazidi minority, speaks to members of the U.N. Security Council at the U.N. headquarters in New York City, December 16, 2015. (photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
Yazidi
Activist Nadia Murad Speaks Out on the 'Holocaust' of Her People in Iraq
By Eve Ensler, TIME
05 August 16
Two years after the Sinjar massacre, the young activist says
"the entire world remains silent"
In
April this year, I had the honor of writing a piece on Nadia Murad for the TIME 100 list
of the most influential people of the year. Nadia is a member of the ethnic
Kurdish minority Yazidi people, one of thousands who was brutally enslaved by
ISIS in Iraq, who now bravely travels the world to raise awareness
of the genocide.
After
writing about her, I reached out to meet Nadia and find ways our
movements V-Day and One Billion Rising could be in solidarity with hers, to
highlight the efforts of Yazidi women and men to end genocide and sexual
terrorism by ISIS.
Today
is the two-year anniversary of the Sinjar Massacre in northern Iraq. On that date it
is estimated that 10,000 Yazidis were killed or enslaved. In the recent Chilcot
inquiry in Britain on the war in Iraq, intelligence reports show that ISIS “was
formed during the Iraq war of 2003 as the country and its institutions were
dismantled and disenfranchised Iraqis were led to sectarianism.”
This
makes the West, particularly the U.S and U.K., accountable for the crimes that
have followed. The genocidal war against the Yazidi people
continues, despite the courage of activists like Nadia in speaking out for
justice. On Wednesday, Nadia and Yazda, a global Yazidi organization, have
launched a campaign with One Billion Rising to stop the genocide. I spoke with
Nadia recently, to get her thoughts on the anniversary of this horror:
Can
you describe what happened at Sinjar two years ago?
The
attack was launched around 2 a.m. in the morning on Aug. 3. Within a few hours
[ISIS] seized control of Sinjar district, a home to about 350,000 Yazidis. They
gave the Yazidis one choice, convert or die. They drove these choices from
their interpretation of Shari‘a law, as they see Yazidis as “infidels.” Many
men, including some elderly and disabled people who were unable to make the
escape to Mount Sinjar, were killed. After killing the men, they took women and
children into captivity. For the village of Kocho, my village, we could not
make the escape and ISIS reached us in the early hours of the morning. They put
the village under siege until Aug. 15. On that day they separated the men and
killed them, and they took us, the women and children. I was also, like every
other women, girl, or child from Kocho, taken into captivity. There were about
1,100 of us. These attacks happened suddenly and in just a minute we have seen
ourselves powerless people within hands of thousands of terrorists when nobody
had defended us.
Read
more: Tragedy on Mount Sinjar
What
was your life like before?
I was
the youngest girl among my siblings, a simple village girl, who perhaps was
luckier than other siblings as I have the chance to go to school. I was a high
school student, finished the 11th grade, during the summer I was preparing for
the 12th grade, and I was hoping to be a history teacher or to work in a beauty
salon as a makeup artist. I had a simple life, never left the village, never
even been in a major city, my life was all in the village with friends from school
and neighbors.
What
became of your friends and family after ISIS attacked?
On
Aug. 15, ISIS separated about 700 men and young boys from the families and took
them to the outskirts of the village and massacred them. Six of my brothers
were killed with the men. We believe they were killed because about 16 men from
the village survived the massacres and they later told us that all men were
killed. After driving us from Kocho to the Institute of Sinjar near Sinjar
city, they took my mother and around 60 other women and killed them too. ISIS
was not interested in enslaving them as they were old. We were not sure of
their death until this area was recaptured and a mass grave was found. All in
all, 18 individuals from my family are missing including my six brothers and my
mother, my brothers’ wives, my nephews and nieces.
What
happened to you after leaving Sinjar?
I was
taken with some 150 girls, ranging in age from about 9 to 28 years old, to
Mosul where we were distributed from the distribution centers. In these
centers, ISIS militants and others will come and take us and use us for as long
they wished, then return us to the center. I was like all other women and
girls, raped and tortured.
How
did you get out of Iraq?
I
managed to escape from them. I was very lucky as many others remain in
captivity who could not escape. After escape I lived in the refugee camp for
about one year. Then I managed to immigrate to Germany through their program to
treat women and girls who managed to escape captivity. Germany is the only
country to offer help and support to ISIS survivors by giving them two years’
visa program for treating and hosting them in Germany; 1,100 survivors,
including their family members, have benefit from these program, we hope that
other countries would do same.
On
Dec. 15, 2015, Yazda organization, a global Yazidi organization, helped me
to speak before the U.N. Security Council.
Here, my message received some attraction from the international community and
the media. Since that date, I have been on an international campaign to raise
awareness about the Yazidi genocide, the plight of Yazidi women and girls, and
speaking against ISIS, a group that continue to threaten the entire world.
Can
you say how many women are still held in Iraq?
More
than 6,500 women and children were taken into captivity, about 1,200 children
boys were taken to be trained to be future jihadists, among them is my nephew
Malik. From the total captives about 2,648 have managed to escape, more than
3,500 remain in captivity. Our estimate is that hundreds have committed
suicide, or been killed by airstrikes.
How
did the genocide of the Yazidis come about, in your opinion?
The
sickening ideology of the radicals always existed and throughout the history
radicals have committed crimes using the religion as ground for their crimes.
My own community has been subject to more than 74 genocides by radical Muslim
groups, not just now but throughout the history such as the Ottomans and
others. These radical groups, whenever given the chance, will commit their
crimes. What happened in Iraq and Syria was that the world remained silent as
ISIS expanded.
ISIS
did not come down from the sky, they found the opportunity to grow and the
world allowed them to grow. When I was held by them, they had access to
weapons, to food, to clothes. Until today, they do not have a shortage of
ammunition, weapons or food. ISIS controls an area bigger than the United
Kingdom, or many other countries. How do they manage to control these areas if
they are not getting help and ammunition or weapons? Who will believe that an
international coalition of many countries, together with an Arab coalition with
all types of weapons cannot defeat a terrorist group?
Do you
feel the West has done enough for the Yazidis?
The
West has not done much for my community and myself. The entire world remains
silent as Yazidis face a holocaust. They remain silent, well maybe not completely
silent, but they do not act on a solution. The Yazidis are on the route towards
extinction as a people and there is still no prospect of a solution for those
in captivity or for those who have survived.
I have
been asking the world for nine months now to hold ISIS accountable. I have
asked them to bring a case before the International Criminal Court. They have
not done so. I have asked them to end ISIS and they have not done so either. I
still don’t know why they are not fighting ISIS legally through ICC or why they
are not cutting their sources of support or why they are not fighting their
ideology? Bombs only are not enough to eradicate those monsters!
The
world has forgotten Yazidis and other minorities. It seems to me that only a
few people actually care about this suffering.
You
have been traveling the world to wake people to the genocide. What has been the
response to your call?
The
response from the normal people has been immense. Anyone I have spoken to has
felt sympathy. They all feel my pain and they all say they want to do
something. For the governments and officials, I have also visited 17 countries,
they show support, but there has been no action. No action on ending ISIS or on
ICC case, or even on helping refugees or on allowing special cases to find a
safe home. Since two years, the situation for Yazidis is getting worse day by
the day as the genocide is ongoing as the last U.N. report stated. Some
countries individually have acknowledged the genocide and I am glad they have
done so. But there has been no action.
What
can people do across the planet to be in solidarity with your struggle?
I
would like to take this opportunity to ask people to participate in my
social-media campaign on Aug. 3 and tweet #Remember3August or
#StopYazidiGenocide
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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