DİHA - Dicle News Agency

HÜLYA EMEÇ

DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - Two Êzîdî women from Shengal who successfully escaped Daesh with their children, recently reunited with their families in Southern Kurdistan, have called for immediate intervention.

The Diyarbakır-based joint effort by NGOs and civil society organizations called "Struggle for Women Detained by Daesh" coordinated the return of the women, who were in Daesh captivity for seven months. We rode with the women as they traveled from Diyarbakır to Duhok, to see their families after what they called their long and unending nightmare. As we set out with the group from Diyarbakır to Duhok in the early morning, the sight of Êzîdî children praying the Muslim prayers forced on them by Daesh in captivity revealed the depth of Daesh's effect on the children. R.Y., who has spent the last nine months in Daesh captivity with her two children, related the day 200 gang members descended on her village in Shengal.

'The roads were full of corpses'

"At first they said 'we won't do anything; if you just become Muslims you can go on with your lives.' I think in that period they had taken thousands of captives and couldn't accommodate any more. So they wanted to buy time. "A little while later, they took us captive. They burned alive the ones who tried to run, so the roads were full of corpses. They looted our villages, and took all the gold and money." The countryside rolled by out the window of our car as we got closed to Duhok. R.Y.'s children began to shout with joy "Kurdistan!" "They separated out the young and old women. Then they took me and my eldest child and put us in the section for young women," she said. They were kept in a basement in Til Alfar with 300 other women and children. "It was hot and airless. August is really hot in Kurdistan. Just think of it, 300 women and children, trapped there, hungry and thirsty. Our children were vomiting from the heat. There was nowhere for them to sleep, and we were all standing, because we didn't fit in the basement. It was hard to stand the smell."

Violence, rape, torture...

After 20 days of living on only rice porridge in the basement, R.Y. and the others were transported to the village of Kesra Mihaba. There, they were told that all the men in their families had been killed. They spent two months in Kesra Mihaba when one day Daesh members forced them into a car and said they were leaving. "It was hard to travel in that heat. The whole way, the children were vomiting from the heat and from fear. We had no idea what would happen to us. And then we got to Rakka." There, in the city Daesh has declared as its capital, R.Y. and her child were among ten captives selected for an unknown fate and carried away to a house in the city. "Then we looked and saw they had brought some gang members they called 'husbands,'" she said. "We were so scared. We said 'please don't touch us; God above is watching.' No one listened to us. Each one chose a woman." R.Y. says the gang members, including American, German, Russian and Arab gang members, used both physical violence, including rape and torture, and psychological violence against the women.

'He whipped my son for minutes without stopping'

"I was beaten right in front of my children. They were crying and wailing from fear. The gangs hit them too," she said. "I tried to kill myself several times but my little daughter was crying, and I gave up that idea. "What's so interesting about what I experienced is that those scenes were just like the things cooked up in films," she said. "For example, they would eat right in front of my children and throw them the bones. They were always giving my children Qur'an lessons, trying to brainwash them. "One day my child, H., was crying for meat. I sneaked him a little piece of chicken, thinking they wouldn’t notice. Then the man who took us captive realized what I had done. He hit me for hours. He hit my son very hard and whipped him for minutes without stopping. Then he forced my finger into my son's mouth and made him throw up the meat."

'I tried a lot of different methods to keep from being pregnant'

R.Y.'s friend N.B. says she was captured when her baby was just four months old. "The thing I remember most from that time is the children crying for days from hunger and the women being raped," she said. "There was no woman there who wasn't sold multiple times. Women would be sold as a group to one person. When that man got tired of them, he'd sell them to someone else. So the market for women was always going. "I was sold and raped so many times. I tried a lot of different methods to keep from being pregnant. I begged the neighbors for a pill and they managed to sneak me one. "It was a terrible time. They would ask me, 'do you love Kurdistan?' Every time I would say 'yes, I do,' and every time they would slap me. The same happened to my children," she said. R.Y. says that finally, she and her friend N.B. were able to escape. The women and children hid their identities under long black robes and set off on the first road they saw.

Êzîdî women reunited with their families

"I don't know how I survived. There was a moment when I was about to give up," she said of the flight. "I was really thirsty and I was telling them, 'leave me behind.' But N.B. wouldn't let me stop. She said I had to keep running." "There were moments I was sure we would be killed. We just ran faster," said N.B. "After we ran for hours, we reached Kobanê. The YPG/YPJ forces met us and we stayed with them for a while. Then they helped us reach our family." "Now I've found out that my husband survived. I'm so happy to hear this," said R.Y., who was reunited with her family in a village near Duhok yesterday. "But after living this pain for months, I don’t know how we will go on living as a family."

"There are so many women still in Daesh's hands. I just want them to be saved," said N.B. "They sold them all. They raped them. There are ones who are still children and are pregnant. Please, let the world stand up for us."

(cm/nt)