Yazidi Women Tell of Rape and Enslavement at Hands of ISIS
by KELLY COBIELLA, YUKA TACHIBANA and BEN ADAMS
KHANKE CAMP, Iraq — The grandmother lifted her face to heaven and let out a high wail.
“I pray for this hell to end,” the 64-year-old said before crumpling onto the floor of her hut.
Kimy Hassan Sayfo. Yuka Tachibana / NBC News
Kimy Hassan Sayfo’s daughters and granddaughters have been held captive by ISIS. Two daughters recently escaped but extremist fighters have kept her young granddaughters “for themselves,” she said.
Her story echoes those of countless others across this vast tent city full ofYazidis, a tiny and ancient religious minority reviled and persecuted by ISIS.
More than 3,000 women and girls were taken captive when ISIS attacked ancestral Yazidi villages around northwestern Iraq’s Sinjar Mountain in August 2014. Nearly half-a-million people have been displaced since, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Yazidi Affairs Directorate.
Today, community leaders say around 2,000 women and girls are still being bought and sold in ISIS-controlled areas. The young become sex slaves and older women are beaten and used as house slaves, according to survivors and accounts from ISIS militants.
“SOME ARE SOLD FOR WEAPONS, OR FOR JUST $10, OR 10 CIGARETTES.”
“Aveen” was among the countless who were taken. She told NBC News how ISIS fighters separated the men from women and children when her village was attacked.
“They took young girls, seven, nine and 10 years old,” said Aveen, whose name has been changed and face hidden to protect her identity.
The women and children were held in a school where, she said, the guards would come at night to take away women and rape them.
Aveen said she spent most of her time with ISIS in Raqqa, held by a fighter who raped and beat her repeatedly. The 23-year-old escaped after nearly a year in captivity.
