Azzad Alsalem Profile picture
Yezidis are ethno-religious group.1 of the world oldest religions. #YezidiGenocide #YazidiKidnapped #YazidiPlight

Aug 17, 2018, 23 tweets

#YazidiGenocide survivor: I gave a birth in ISIS captivity after that I was sold seven times to be raped and tortured.
ISIS fighters established a system for swx slavery that rape/enslavement of non Muslims is like worship.
Her husband is missing must probably killed @TarekFatah

IS fighters established a system of sexual slavery, claiming that the rape of non-Muslims was a form of worship. They set up markets in several towns where girls as young as nine were put up for auction to militants, with owners often trading women again online.
#YazidiGenocide

2)I was sold seven times, and lots of women had a much worse life than me,” Nour says of her battle to survive. She had two daughters, then aged 3 and 4, and was pregnant with a son when her family was seized.
Her husband was taken away after two days and is still missing @POTUS

3)Soon afterwards, Nour gave birth in a freezing room, slipping out of consciousness as two fellow prisoners did their best to serve as midwives. “They had washed me. Because it was cold, they wrapped me in a lot of blankets, and after a while the elderly women told me: #Yezidis

4) ‘Wake up, you have given birth to a child,’ ” Nour says. “I kept crying, because I hadn’t even realised that.”
Pregnancy had protected her from sexual slavery, but now Nour and her three children were taken to a wedding hall in Mosul.
#YazidiGenocide @rcallimachi

5)Every day militants would come and tell us to stand up,put on our headscarves,she says They were looking at the women, to see who was beautiful. They would take even those who were already married.”
She made herself look as dirty and dishevelled as possible, to evade selection

6)she tried to keep her son alive, feeding him on sugar water when her own milk dried up and the IS fighters refused to provide formula milk. But when her son was two months old,they were sent to Raqqa
There, she was selected for transport to the recently captured city of Palmyra

7)where there was a market for women, and forced to make a terrible choice between her children. “One of my daughters couldn’t walk, because she had had surgery on her leg, and I couldn’t carry her and my son,” she said. “So I left him with my husband’s relatives in Raqqa.”

8)In Palmyra, the women and their children were held in a large house, and every day militants took a few to the slave market for sale, returning with any who had not found a buyer by evening.
“The militants sold almost all the women, until it was just me and three others @POTUS

9)Then one fighter bought me and took me to his house.” The man, a 26-year-old Syrian, “was very cruel”, she says. He raped her and regularly beat her two girls.
After two weeks, Nour escaped, breaking a lock and slipping into the night with her girls
#YazidiGenocide @RitaPanahi

10) But Palmyra is four hours’ drive from Raqqa and even further from the border; with no money, no telephone and no transport, they were reliant on the mercy of locals. None would help, even though Nour speaks Arabic and could explain clearly the horror of her situation...

11) “I told them: ‘Islamic state fighters are doing this and this and this to us, you have to help us, save us,’ but they refused.” At house after house, they were turned away, refused the use of phones or even a drink as the sun beat down on them...
#YazidiPlight
#YazidiGenocide

12) “I asked one family: ‘As you won’t let us in, could you just give me some water for my daughters?’ They refused even that.”
Palmyra is surrounded by desert, so there was nowhere to hide and no way to avoid the roads. By midday, Isis had recaptured them
#YazidiGenocide @POTUS

12) She was returned to her “owner”, who later sold her to a Saudi fighter in Raqqa. She was sold twice more, until she and the girls ended up back in Raqqa with a Palestinian, who bought them from an online slave market.
He was married, and swore to Nour and his wife that ...

13) he had bought her only to do housework and wouldn’t touch her; but he turned out to be one of her cruellest owners. She begged his wife for help, and the wife pushed her husband to sell the family on. Her next owner, apparently dazed by violence or seduced by Isis’s own myths

14) he claimed he loved the woman he had bought online and demanded love in return.
“He asked: ‘Why are you crying?’ and I said: ‘I have been sold so many times. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t do anything with any man except my husband, but they forced me.’ So he said:.....

15) ‘You are like my daughter, I won’t do anything if you don’t agree.’ ”
In an apparent bid to win her respect, the man she knew as Abu Orfman also tracked down her son, in the same internet slave market where he had bought her, and reunited them.

“He brought a laptop to her..

16)which had pictures of all the women and children, and asked: ‘Which one is your son, who do you know in these pictures?’ I found his photo. They searched for 15 days and brought him to me,” she remembers. “We had been separated for over three months.”
#YazidiGenocide @POTUS

17)d joy of d reunion was tempered by d horror of their situation.Her son had been given a Muslim name; he was destined for schools that turned young captives into Isis fighters.
A month later, after Nour refused to convert and marry Abu Orfman, he lost interest and sold her on.

18)There was one more sale before a Yazidi ally, posing as a slave trader from Raqqa, bought Nour and her children freedom. “He looked like an ISIS militant – he wore their clothes, and had a beard and something covering his face,” Nour remembers.
#YazidiGenocide
#YazidiPlight

19)But as he drove them away, he revealed he was taking them to her family. “I told him I couldn’t believe he wasn’t Isis, but he said: ‘This beard is fake. I only wear it to save women and girls.’”
A voice message from her father finally convinced Nour that her ordeal was over.

20) She remembers the fierce joy of that moment, but also the fear that replaced it as she sped away from Isis territory. Now that she had won the battle to survive, she faced the looming question of whether she would ever really be able to go home to her Yezidism faith #Ezidis

#Yezidis welcomed their Kidnapped daughters and fight to get their Kidnapped back.
#YazidiGenocide
#YazidiPlight

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