Yazidi woes drag on after ISIS defeat as religious persecution worsens globally
Dalal Khairo was kidnapped by ISIS, then raped and abused by nine successive militants after the group swept across Iraq in 2014. The 22-year-old lives in Germany now, and says there is not much of a Yazidi homeland to return to.
“The Yazidis are better off moving to other countries because Iraq is not safe; Sinjar is not safe,” Khairo said, referring to the Yazidi heartland in northern Iraq. “Even if they rebuilt the area, it is now controlled by various militia groups and is too dangerous to go back to.” This month, Khairo and other Yazidis marked five years since ISIS overran northwestern Iraq, murdering an estimated 5,000 Yazidi men and boys who refused to convert to Islam, and enslaving some 7,000 women and girls, including some as young as 9. The anniversaries of the killings of Yazidis and Rohingya Muslims will likely be on the minds of world leaders as they meet in New York in September to discuss security threats at the annual UN General Assembly. ISIS was pushed out of Iraq in 2017, but the religious hard-liners cast a long shadow across the Yazidi religious minority, who ISIS branded “infidels” and subjected to sex slavery, murder and other horrors. The brutality against Yazidis was an extreme example of religious persecution — one that triggered an international military intervention that left ISIS decimated. But from China’s gulags for Muslims to a synagogue massacre in the United States, minority faith groups face more frequent attacks nowadays and solutions are in short supply.
Like other abductees, Khairo, then 17, says she was sold, gifted and shared among ISIS fighters, forced to memorize Quranic verses and beaten and humiliated, including by the resentful wives of militiamen. Eventually, Khairo managed to escape. Her mother and sister, also kidnapped, are missing, while her brothers were killed or forced to become child ISIS fighters. She now lives in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, thanks to a local government initiative for ISIS survivors.
“The state of religious freedom around the world is bad, and it’s getting worse,” Brownback, the US envoy for religious freedom, told reporters at the UN headquarters this month.
According to Brownback, 83% of the world’s 7.7 billion people live in countries where religious freedom is threatened or denied. One-third of them faces religious persecution, according to Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz.
Tags:
Yazidi woes drag on after ISIS defeat as religious persecution worsens globally
Dalal Khairo was kidnapped by ISIS, then raped and abused by nine successive militants after the group swept across Iraq in 2014. The 22-year-old lives in Germany now, and says there is not much of a Yazidi homeland to return to.
“The Yazidis are better off moving to other countries because Iraq is not safe; Sinjar is not safe,” Khairo said, referring to the Yazidi heartland in northern Iraq. “Even if they rebuilt the area, it is now controlled by various militia groups and is too dangerous to go back to.” This month, Khairo and other Yazidis marked five years since ISIS overran northwestern Iraq, murdering an estimated 5,000 Yazidi men and boys who refused to convert to Islam, and enslaving some 7,000 women and girls, including some as young as 9. The anniversaries of the killings of Yazidis and Rohingya Muslims will likely be on the minds of world leaders as they meet in New York in September to discuss security threats at the annual UN General Assembly. ISIS was pushed out of Iraq in 2017, but the religious hard-liners cast a long shadow across the Yazidi religious minority, who ISIS branded “infidels” and subjected to sex slavery, murder and other horrors. The brutality against Yazidis was an extreme example of religious persecution — one that triggered an international military intervention that left ISIS decimated. But from China’s gulags for Muslims to a synagogue massacre in the United States, minority faith groups face more frequent attacks nowadays and solutions are in short supply.
Like other abductees, Khairo, then 17, says she was sold, gifted and shared among ISIS fighters, forced to memorize Quranic verses and beaten and humiliated, including by the resentful wives of militiamen. Eventually, Khairo managed to escape. Her mother and sister, also kidnapped, are missing, while her brothers were killed or forced to become child ISIS fighters. She now lives in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, thanks to a local government initiative for ISIS survivors.
“The state of religious freedom around the world is bad, and it’s getting worse,” Brownback, the US envoy for religious freedom, told reporters at the UN headquarters this month.
According to Brownback, 83% of the world’s 7.7 billion people live in countries where religious freedom is threatened or denied. One-third of them faces religious persecution, according to Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz.
Tags:
