Raped Yazidi mothers with children from Islamic State fathers in Iraqi Kurdistan

Yazidi women who were raped by Islamic State militants, or gave birth to their children, are being given shelter in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Many have nowhere to go after being rejected by their own community and families.

Shadha Salim is a Yazidi survivor who returned to Iraqi Kurdistan region less than a year ago. She was living with an Islamic State (IS) man in the town of Al Mayadin in Syria.

She was pregnant to him, but aborted the child just before leaving Syria. She came back to Iraqi Kurdistan to be reunited with her family in Duhok.

Salim says that getting pregnant to an IS man was the only way to stop others from raping the Yazidi women.

“None of the Yazidi girls and women like to have children from Daesh. But because their lives were treated as trade goods, she would be given to a Daesh man who would savagely rape her, and by the evening, she would be given to another one to be raped. I mean, sometimes in one day, seven Daesh infidels would rape one Yazidi woman. Therefore the Yazidi women would take the option of having babies from Daesh.”

Salim says that she was raped by 12 different men. It only stopped when one man realised that she was pregnant and stopped selling her to others.

Salim, who comes from the village of Kocho in Sinjar area, says her sister was also kidnapped by IS. But she says she committed suicide by throwing herself into the river in Raqqa.

Source: Ekurd