A Yazidi member of Iraqi’s parliament described some of the horrific atrocities committed by Islamic State terrorists against her people in the war-torn region, claiming that one woman who was held captive for days was tricked into eating her own child.
Vian Dakhil, the Iraqi parliament’s only female Yazidi member, made the shocking claim during an emotional interview this month translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Ms. Dakhil told Extra News TV that thousands of Yazidi women and young boys and girls have been killed or kidnapped by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and bred to become sex slaves or suicide bombers. Ms. Dakhil, an activist who has organized rescue missions of Yazidi prisoners, recounted the harrowing backgrounds of some of the women she helped rescue.
“ISIS members call us and offer to sell us [Yazidi girls]. One may call and say that he holds a certain girl and wants to sell her. They call the girl’s family, and we buy her,” she said. “We, the Yazidis, in the 21st century, buy our daughters and our women.”
Yazidi Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil Breaks Down in Tears Recounting Atrocities Committed by ISIS against Her People pic.twitter.com/T69GXmfLn8
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 26, 2017
“One of the women whom we managed to retrieve from ISIS said that she was held in a cellar for three days, without food or anything,” Ms. Dakhil said. “Afterwards, they brought her a plate of rice and meat. She ate the food because she was very hungry. When she finished, they said to her: We cooked your 1-year-old son that we took from you, and this is what you just ate.”
The interviewer shook his head in disbelief. Ms. Dakhil continued, fighting back tears, “One of the girls said that they took six of her sisters. Her youngest sister, a 10-year-old girl, was raped to death in front of her father and sisters. She was 10 years old.”
“The question that we keep asking is: ’Why?’ Why did these savages do this to us?” she asked.
The shocking interview was first reported by MEMRI on June 2 but didn’t start gaining national attention until Tuesday.
The New York Daily News reported that Ms. Dakhil gave a speech last month in Oslo, telling the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “Nearly three years on people forget about us but the misery and tragedy is still there and just as real with 420,000 Yazidis living as refugees in Kurdistan in very miserable conditions and thousands of girls still in captivity and tortured.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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