Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Tied to a bed, injected with morphine to stay 'silent' and beaten so badly she couldn't walk for two months: Two Yazidi sex slaves relive the unspeakable cruelty they suffered at hands of ISIS fighters
By Owen Holdaway

A mother, 19, 'submitted' to her captor when he beat her one-year-old son
She felt like killing herself but could not do it, fearful of her son's welfare
Another woman, 25, beaten so severely she could not walk for two months
Both sold at vile slave auctions, then passed from one fanatic to another
They told how 'European' fighters also took part in the sick trade
Hundreds of Yazidi women have been captured, kept as sex slaves by ISIS

Two Yazidi women have told of the unimaginable cruelty they suffered at the hands of ISIS fighters who kept them as their sex slaves after raiding their homes in Iraq.

One, a 19-year-old mother, says she allowed her first captor who 'bought her' to rape her 'whenever he wanted' because he would beat her one-year-old baby son if she resisted. Her son was the only thing stopping her from taking her own life. Her second jailer raped an elderly mother and her daughter.

The second woman, 25, was sold again and again to a string of cruel fanatics who tied her to the bed and drugged her with morphine to keep her 'silent'. She was beaten so badly that she could not walk for two months.

From the relative safety of the Khanke refugee camp in Iraq, they revealed to MailOnline the gruesome reality of being an ISIS prisoner - and the remarkable stories of how they escaped.
Abused: 19-year-old mother 'Reehan' (pictured) told MailOnline how she submitted to her cruel captive's sexual abuse when he began to beat her one-year-old son (pictured)



Abused: 19-year-old mother 'Reehan' (pictured) told MailOnline how she submitted to her cruel captive's sexual abuse when he began to beat her one-year-old son (pictured)



Enslaved: And 25-year-old 'Barfo' (pictured) recalled how one of her ISIS jailers drugged her with morphine and another beat her so badly she could not walk for two months

Link to Full Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... hters.html

[Anthea]

The Telegraph

This man risks his life every day to rescue kidnapped women from Islamic State

A lawyer named Khaleel al-Dakhi tells Olivia Goldhill why he isn't afraid to rescue women and children from the unimaginable horrors of the Islamic State
By Olivia Goldhill

During the siege of Mount Sinjar last August, thousands of men were brutally murdered over a matter of weeks. But amid the slaughter, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) terrorists chose a different fate for the women of the town. Women from every house were taken hostage, with Isil fighters grabbing thousands of young girls and elderly grandmothers in the largest single kidnapping of women this century.

After the attack, those who survived faced the seemingly impossible task of trying to rescue their women from Isil territory. No government has offered to infiltrate Isil and help free the women, and so it’s left to the Sinjar citizens to get their sisters, daughters, and mothers back.

One man, a lawyer named Khaleel al-Dakhi, is at the forefront of this improvised rescue mission. So far, his network has saved 530 women and children from the hands of Isil.

Today, Khaleel says that Isil is no longer the impenetrable force it once was, and a myriad of informants from inside the terrorists’ territory leak information on the power structure and its daily operations. But after the Sinjar siege, there was no information on where the girls might be imprisoned or even whether they were still alive.

Link to Full VERY Interesting Article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens ... rrors.html

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Yazidi girls raped five times a day by sadistic ISIS fighters who burned them with cigarettes before letting six more men abuse them at once: Sex slaves reveal the hell they endured before escaping to UK
By Sam Tonkin

Three young Yazidi shared their horrific stories at a meeting in London
After escaping Iraq, the women were flown to the UK by the charity AMAR
They spoke to dissuade impressionable young Muslims from joining ISIS
The women have returned to Iraq but have been offered asylum in Germany

Three former ISIS brides have told of the daily horror they endured before escaping the terror group - including being raped five times a day and sold as sex slaves.

The young Yazidi women, Bushra, 21, Munira, 17, and Noor, 22, were abused on a regular basis, including being tied up, gang raped and burnt with cigarettes, after being forced to marry ISIS fighters. Their names have been changed to protect their identity.

After escaping Iraq, the women were flown to the UK by international charity AMAR, which helps people rebuild their lives following conflict.

They have told their stories in the hope of dissuading impressionable young Muslim girls from joining the terror group in Syria and Iraq.

Bushra, who tried to kill herself after she was sold to Islamic State, said: 'The man who had bought me took me to hospital.

'He told me he was going to rape me that same day, however ill I made myself. He took me home, tied up my hands and feet, and raped me.

Link to Full SHOCKING Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... laves.html

[Anthea]

The Telegraph

Islamic State forces young Iraqi boys to 'practice beheadings on dolls'

Yazidi boy who escaped an IS training camp he was forced to join describes being made to practice beheadings on dolls and to physically fight his own brother

When Islamic State extremists overran Yazidi towns in northern Iraq last year, they butchered older men and enslaved many of the women and girls.

Dozens of young Yazidi boys like Yahya had a different fate: IS sought to re-educate them.

They forced boys as young as eight to convert to Islam from their ancient faith and become jihadi fighters, making them practice beheadings on dolls.

Yahya (no real name given), 14, and his brother escaped the "Farouq Institute For Cubs" in Raqqa a few months ago where they had spent five months in training.

He said: "They brought dolls and they told us how to hold the sword and how to chop off the head."

"The first time I hit it I couldn't cut it, neither the second and third time. But then they taught me how to hold the sword and they told me how to hit and they told me that it was the head of the infidels."

It is part of a concerted effort by the extremists to build a new generation of militants, according to AP interviews with residents who fled or still live under IS in Syria and Iraq.

Link to Article - Photos - Videos:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... dolls.html

[Anthea]

BBC News

Smugglers help enslaved Yazidis escape Islamic State

When members of the Yazidi religious minority fled as Islamic State (IS) militants swept across northern Iraq a year ago, many women and girls were enslaved. But hundreds have now been freed thanks to a network of smugglers run by an Iraqi businessman, as BBC Persian's Nafiseh Kohnavard reports.

It is almost 01:00 on the Iraqi-Turkish border and the guards are preparing to close the gates for the night.

As passengers hurry to get on the last buses heading into Turkey, a Yazidi family are standing silently, eyes fixed on the crossing point.

Suddenly, a woman and four children appear from the Turkish side. The family rush to greet them and the whole group dissolves into tears.

As they hug each other they keep looking into each other's eyes, unable to believe they are finally together again.

Khatoon, 35, and her children - aged between four and 10 - were captured by IS militants who stormed their village in Iraq's Sinjar region in August 2014.

They were taken to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the caliphate declared by IS two months earlier.

Khatoon looks exhausted and barely able to stand.

"It was horrible," she says. "They didn't give us enough food or water, or let us wash. Sometimes they beat us."

Link to Full Heart Wrenching Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33964147

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Yazidi life through a lens: Courageous young women made homeless by ISIS get behind the camera to rebuild their shattered lives
By Flora Drury

Yazidi women took part in new photography course at camp near Dohuk
Caught images of friends and neighbours, as well as buildings and shrines
Found tales of tragedy and stories of hope in camp they now call home
Project allowed one to go to school, and gave another an idea for a career

The worn faces of the Yazidi girls who have escaped the evil grasp of ISIS have become all too familiar to the world over the course of the last year.

Their sad eyes have stared out of thousands of photographs, as they wait, trapped in the camps on the edge of the country that is their home.

But now some of those girls have got behind the camera themselves, allowing the west an insight into their world no outsider can recreate.



Link to Full Interesting Article & Photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lives.html

[Anthea]

Rudaw

Yezidi girl declines asylum offer from French president

A young Kurdish Yezidi woman who escaped torture at the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIS, was met by French President Francois Hollande,

The French president offered to allow the girl to stay in France, but she declined the offer. She called on Hollande and the rest of the international community to take serious steps in order to save the thousands of Yezidi girls who are captured by ISIS militants following the brutal invasion of the Mount Shingal area in August, 2014.

Link to Article - Video:

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/100920151

[Anthea]

Mail Online

'This is revenge for the Yazidi girls': How three brave female fighters killed 10 ISIS jihadis a day on the frontline in Iraq
By Owen Holdaway In Mount Sinjar

All-female fighting unit is stemming the tide of ISIS' ethnic cleansing of Yazidis in Mount Sinjar, northern Iraq
Women left behind lives in Turkey and smuggle themselves into Kurdistan to take revenge for Yazidi murders
At the peak of the fighting, the AK47-wielding women were shooting dead up to 10 ISIS insurgents a day
They said they find drugs on jihadis they have captured on killed that they have taken to pluck up courage to fight on battlefield
They said Islamic extremists are frightened of being killed by a woman and denied 'Jannah' or paradise after death

Three courageous women have told how they formed an armed all-female fighting unit and killed up to 10 ISIS jihadis a day to stop the Yazidi genocide on embattled Mount Sinjar.

The women took the extraordinary decision to leave behind their lives in Turkey and travel to Kurdistan, northern Iraq, to end the bloodshed of Yazidis being slaughtered there.

'When we heard ISIS were coming to Sinjar and killing women, we came to stop the humanitarian crisis,' Roza, 22, the youngest of the group, told MailOnline.



Link to Full MUST READ Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l-facebook

[Anthea]

Shengal people fighting poverty and cold call for help

Êzîdî people continue fighting hunger, poverty and cold as they still maintain their lives on Mount Shengal since the massacre perpetrated by savage ISIS gangs against their community in Shengal town in South Kurdistan last year. The people say it is only PKK (Kurdistan Worker's Party) that is helping them.

'WE HAVE NOTHING SUITABLE FOR WINTER'

A woman by the name of Naam İlas told the followings as to what they are going through at the moment; "One year has passed since the massacre. We spent last winter and this summer under challenging circumstances of cold and hot weather. There is no difficulty we haven't faced since. And now, winter lies ahead of us and our children have neither clothes nor shoes to wear. We have somehow managed to overcome the challenges but we are still in need of basic things to meet the winter. We want those who hear us to help us. We have no firewood or fuel, which makes us feel worried and sad as the urgent needs of us and our children have yet to be met. I am calling on the world to help the people living on the mountain here."

'IT IS ONLY PKK THAT HELPED US'

İlas underlined that it was only PKK guerrillas that helped them during all the difficult days they have been through so far, adding; "Our children died from the cold last winter. Hunger, poverty and cold brought along diseases. There was no doctor or medicine, because of which dozens of children died of cold. We need help now as we don't want our remaining children to die. Poverty and cold is killing those whom ISIS couldn't massacre. We want people to help us and to stop pretending not to see us. We suffered a big massacre. ISIS kidnapped our girls, tried to destroy our religion and blew up our sacred places. We hope the states to hear us will lend a helping hand to us. We need doctor, medicine, stove, pullover and supplies to survive the winter. We are just defending our religion like every other folk. We have never harmed anyone."

'PKK MET OUR NEEDS'

Another civilian by the name of İlyas Qero recalled that the massacre perpetrated by ISIS was the 74th one suffered by the Êzîdî community in their history. He told that they were about to die of thirst and hunger when they could eventually managed to take shelter on the mountain and had only some bread to eat.

Qero also stated that it was only PKK fighters that helped them, adding; "Guerrillas met our needs such as clothing, tents and blankets to seek shelter from the cold. We managed to handle the cold weather thanks to the things they gave to us to protect ourselves from the perishing cold last winter. PKK gave us patience. However, we have nothing ahead of the approaching winter and cold, no clothes, no tents, no woods. We want help."

'I DO NOT KNOW HOW WE WILL SURVIVE THIS WINTER'

Esmer Qero voiced concerns about their circumstances by saying that; "I do not know how we will survive this winter."

A youth by the name of Hadi Hesen called for solidarity with the Êzîdî community to overcome the problems they still face.

Another Êzîdî woman by the name of Emşe Reşo Kasım said; "The days we went through last winter very very hard. The summer was pretty easier in comparison with the winter. We are not ready to meet this winter though. We lack basic stuff to overcome it and we want help."

[Anthea]

CNN

'Hundreds' of Yazidi women killing themselves in ISIS captivity

Dohuk, Iraq (CNN)"Hello?" The voice is muffled, crackly, and barely audible, but the caller's desperation is clear: "Our situation is very bad and cannot get any worse."

On the other end of the phone, Ameena Saeed Hasan offers a lifeline: the chance to plot an escape from slavery at the hands of ISIS.

Every day, Hasan takes calls like this one. A former Iraqi lawmaker, she is now making it her mission to rescue as many Yazidi women as she can.

When ISIS first captured Mosul, Hasan thought the Yazidi on Mount Sinjar would be safe.

"We said 'Why would they come to Sinjar?'" she recalls. "There is no oil or anything. What would they take?"

But ISIS fighters did come to Sinjar. There may not have been any oil reserves for them to steal, but instead they took another of the region's most important resources: its people.

Islamic militants captured thousands of Yazidi women and children, and killed the men. ISIS claims the Quran justifies taking non-Muslim women and girls captive, and permits their rape.

The Yazidis, a small Iraqi minority who believe in a single god who created the Earth and left it in the care of a peacock angel, have been subjected to large-scale persecution by ISIS, which accuses them of devil worship.

The United Nations has accused ISIS of committing genocide against the Yazidis.

The families of many of the missing have reached out to Hasan for help.

"People know me," she explains. "I am from Sinjar and also I am Yazidi. I know many people who were kidnapped. Some were my relatives, my neighbors, and they called me."

Together with her husband, Khalil, Hasan manages a network to smuggle the women out: she takes the calls, and Khalil makes the dangerous journey to the Iraq-Syria border to bring them to safety.

So far, the couple has rescued more than a hundred people. One of the first was a 35-year-old woman with six children -- all of whom had been captured, bought and sold in ISIS' slave markets.

In her desperate call to Hasan, she described what had happened to them: "They loaded two big trucks from the village and took them somewhere, I don't know where. When they were loading people on to the truck, a woman started arguing with them, so they killed her."

Despite her horrific ordeal, the kidnapped woman in this recording was one of the lucky ones -- she got out, eventually.

Others are not so fortunate. Hasan says many women, repeatedly raped and abused by their captors, have taken their own lives rather than wait to be saved.

"We just want them to be rescued," she says, through tears of sadness and frustration. "Hundreds of girls have committed suicide.

"I have some pictures of the girls who have committed suicide ... when they lose hope for rescue and when ISIS many times sell them and rape them ... I think there is maybe 100. We lost contact with most of them."

Hasan's work has been recognized with an award from the U.S. State Department for the help she's given to ISIS slaves.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised her "courageous efforts on behalf of the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq, for insisting that the world give heed to the horrors that they face, and ... firm commitment to helping the victims and saving lives."

But she is haunted by the thought of those she could not save.

"I cannot sleep, I cannot forget what has happened to them," she says.

"[They ask] When will you rescue us? But I don't have the answer. I'm not a government. I'm not anything. I'm just people. It's very difficult."

Many have joined the fight against ISIS; instead of bombs and bullets, Hasan's weapon is her phone; with it, she offers hope, however distant, and a promise that help is coming.

Link to Article - Videos - Information:

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/05/middl ... captivity/

[Anthea]

Kurds and Yezidis in fresh offensive against ISIS in Shengal

While UN NATO and the rest of the ENTIRE world does NOTHING

The operation of YBŞ (Shengal Resistance Units) and YPJ-Shengal (Women's Defense Units) against ISIS gangs in Shengal continues.

The united forces have launched a fresh offensive against ISIS gangs deployed in Shilo valley to the west of Shengal early this morning.

According to the reports from the area, YBŞ and YPJ-Shengal have seized control of two hills where gangs were deployed, as a result of effective actions within the scope of the offensive. Clashes in the area of the both hills are going on.

The offensive is also being joined by guerrillas affiliated to HPG (People's Defense Forces) and YJA Star (Free Women's Troops).

An official statement on the offensive is expected to be released later.

[Anthea]

Yezidis horrendously tortured - slaughtered - kidnapped - raped - dying - ignored

More than 3,000 Yezidis still held as sex slaves and

NOBODY

helps them

The entire world seems to want to rehouse jihadists

NOBODY

wants to rehouse the Yezidis

It has been more than a year since the first attack on the Yezidis

Yezidis are still under attack

Yezidis are still dying

Apart from the Kurds

NOBODY

is helping the Yezidis

[Anthea]

Why Islamic State hate Yezidis:

Interesting Video:

http://news.discovery.com/history/video ... 151016.htm

[Anthea]

Yazidis urge UN to define IS onslaught as genocide

The Islamic State (IS) group captured 19 of Pari Ibrahim’s female relatives when it tore through Iraq last year. Two have escaped, the rest remain in sexual slavery – or worse, Ibrahim told Middle East Eye.

On Wednesday, she brought her message to the UN Security Council. She criticised diplomats for failing to show unity against IS atrocities and urged them to refer a case of genocide to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

“For Yazidis, it is very important to secure recognition that a genocide was committed against us,” she said. “The word genocide is important, and starting an ICC case will eventually bring recognition, reparations and ensure the protection of civilians in the future.”

Last year, Russia and China vetoed a draft UN resolution to refer Syria’s conflict to the ICC, saying it would worsen the country’s civil war. Moscow is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which, like IS, is accused of committing atrocities against civilians.

Ibrahim suggested a new draft resolution that would not affect Assad. It would limit the court’s jurisdiction to genocide and other crimes committed against Yazidis in Sinjar and Nineveh Plains, in northwest Iraq, from August 2014 onwards, she said.

It was not immediately clear whether any UN members back Ibrahim’s plan, but divisions in the council over Syria deepened last month with the start of Russia’s airstrike campaign against IS and other opponents of Assad’s forces in Syria.

Spain’s foreign minister, Jose Manuel García Margallo, said the meeting offered an opportunity for Ibrahim, alongside victims of terrorist attacks in Spain and Nigeria, to “tell their truth and tell their story” of “naked suffering”.

In September, Ibrahim’s organisation, the Free Yezidi Foundation, teamed up with Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former ICC prosecutor, to release a report about IS atrocities that focuses on foreign fighters who have traveled to join IS.

Many of these militants come from countries that are members of the ICC and should face genocide charges at the international tribunal, rather than terrorism, murder or rape cases in national courtrooms.

“We want them to be prosecuted for genocide and not just terrorism-related charges. It’s not justice if they get 20 years for rape or murder. That’s not the same as being tried for carrying out an act of genocide,” she told MEE.

“We want to highlight the failure of the Security Council, the mechanisms we have and of member states, which should be more open to giving the ICC information about foreign fighters who leave their countries to kill, rape and commit genocide against Yazidis.”

Last August, the world watched in awe as the radical IS militia launched its blitzkrieg offensive through Yazidi areas in northwest Iraq and sent members of the religious sect fleeing from their centuries-old villages for refuge up the slopes of Mt. Sinjar.

At the time, it looked like IS was purging its growing proto-state of Yazidis, an ancient, predominantly Kurdish people who follow principles of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism which – according to IS – amounts to devil-worship.

But, according to studies by the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, IS had also methodically planned to enslave thousands of women in an effort to satiate its army and draw Muslims from overseas to swell its ranks.

As fighters overran villages, they executed Yazidi men and adolescent boys and forced women and girls into a system of slave auctions and servitude to IS fighters, sheikhs and other bigwigs of the self-styled caliphate.

Andrej Umansky, a criminal law specialist at Cologne University, and other researchers who documented Nazi war crimes, are now investigating whether massacres by IS members against Yazidis amount to genocide.

According to the treaty that underpins the ICC, genocide is defined as killings or other atrocities that are “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Ibrahim and her family fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and live in the Netherlands. She launched her foundation in August 2014 in response to IS raids on the villages of her relatives in Iraq. It provides support to Yazidi victims of IS violence.

By supporting schemes that assist some 400,000 displaced Yazidis in northern Iraq, European leaders can slow the number of them who join an exodus of Middle Eastern refugees that is sending shockwaves across Europe, she said.

“If you do not provide refugees, who have suffered so much, with pyscho-social support and other care that they need, then how can you can expect them to travel to other countries to find a future for themselves and their children?” she said.

By James Reinl

Source: Middle East Eye

[Anthea]

Two mass graves in Shingal have reportedly been discovered since Saturday, with one found Saturday containing 80 Yezidi women and the other from Sunday containing the remains of 50 Yezidi men, Rudaw has learned.

"Fifty bodies, all men, are in the mass graves," a Peshmerga eyewitness told Rudaw Sunday.

A Rudaw reporter, speaking live on the scene, said "the mass graves are located on the Grozir road, the last Peshmerga-ISIS point."

"The bodies are buried in eight separate graves close to each other," said the reporter.

A Peshmerga soldier told Rudaw that "the corpses of my uncle and a few cousins are contained in these graves."

“Killing these innocent people is one of the crimes ISIS perpetrated against the Yezidi Kurds,” Qasim Simo, head of Shingal security, told Rudaw.

Saturday’s mass grave was found only meters away from the Shingal Technical Institute.

Video footage of the mass grave filmed by a Rudaw cameraman shows women’s clothes, long hair and other outfits unique to the Yezidi community.

According to Simo, ISIS militants buried the bodies of the Yezidi women in what used to be the technical institute’s fish pond.

He added Kurdish forces had prior information about several mass graves in the town and the one discovered Saturday is believed to be one of the largest.