A Yazidi girl has spoken of the great pain she went through at the hands of ISIS militants after she was captured and used as a sex slave.
In 2014, ISIS fighters attacked the Yazidis, an ethnic Kurdish group in northern Iraqi, killing the men and capturing women as sex slaves.
Ekhlas, who was 14 at the time, tried to escape but was not fast enough. She was kidnapped along with thousands of other Yazidi women. She was held by ISIS as a sex slave for six months.
“Every day for six months he raped me. I tried to kill myself,” she told the BBC Victoria Derbyshire show.
“He picked me out of 150 girls by drawing lots. He was so ugly, like a beast, with his long hair. He smelt so bad, I was so frightened I couldn’t look at him.”
After six months, Ekhlas managed to escape as her captor was out fighting. She was taken to a refugee camp.
“How am I telling you this without crying? I tell you I ran out of tears,” she said.
She is now in Germany where she is under therapy and wants to become a lawyer in the future.
Some 9,900 Yazidis were killed or captured when ISIS took over Mount Sinjar in the summer of 2014.
edgeheadedguy on July 26th, 2017 at 12:18 UTC »
Man this hurts to read. These people have lived peacefully in their homeland for so long and in just a couple years it's all destroyed. I hope she lives a great life and her children don't have to ever experience such horror.
DrNickW on July 26th, 2017 at 12:06 UTC »
Can't even imagine the internal strength she must have to survive an episode like this, at 14, and have the fortitude and ambition she seems to have now.
Reading about all the ISIS atrocities can be slightly desensitising for a sheltered westerner like me, but people with the bravery like this to speak up help to highlight the many who can't speak out, and remind me of the shear scale of human suffering that is going on at the hands of ISIS (and all around the world). Not nice to think about but very important imho.
SalokinSekwah on July 26th, 2017 at 11:44 UTC »
It seems history will record the literal genocide of Yazidis by ISIS as the one worst atrocities in modern times.
Just fuck ISIS, i look forward to their annihilation