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Former sex slave urges Australia to try Islamic State for genocide

Nadia will meet with Australian leaders in Canberra to ask for action against Islamic State.

Nadia will meet with Australian leaders in Canberra to ask for action against Islamic State. Photo: ABC

Nadia Murad, a 21-year-old survivor of the Islamic State (IS) attack on the village of Kocho in Iraq in 2014, is campaigning for the UN Security Council to refer IS’s crimes to the international criminal court for prosecution.

She will speak today with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julia Bishop, and said she plans to ask them to take action against IS and to recognise the attacks on the Yazidis as genocide.

All of the men in Ms Murad’s village were massacred, including her six brothers and mother, and all the women and children were enslaved.

Nadia was bought and sold several times and used as a sex slave by IS fighters.

Ms Murad said on the first day of attacks on her village more than 4000 men were killed, and over 6000 women and children were enslaved — including her family.

“It’s difficult to express my feeling and tell you how much we suffered … how they forced us to convert, how they sold us … how they raped us, how they abused us physically, sexually and psychologically,” she said.

“How they did this to the entire community, not just myself, and this was a campaign to wipe out the Yazidi from the surface of Earth.”

Nadia Murad testifies during an examination of ISIS ideology and how it relates to the terror attack in Orlando. Photo: Getty

Nadia Murad testifies in the United States at an examination of ISIS ideology and how it relates to the terror attack in Orlando. Photo: Getty

 

Many Yazidi villages, including Kocho, remain under IS control and Ms Murad said she did not know whether she would ever return.

“We are scared. We are afraid that we will be enslaved again,” she said.

“All Yazidis have the same feeling and they don’t know when this campaign will return, will be repeated.

“Because all our neighbours from the community around us supported ISIS … those people who were, we were eating with them, hanging out with them and they were our friends.

“Suddenly they supported ISIS and started to kill us and enslave Yazidi women and children.

“That’s why it’s very difficult for Yazidis to return back without international protection.”

‘Yazidis are facing extinction’

Ms Murad said she would give Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop the same message she had been giving every world leader that she has met with in the past seven months.

“I will tell them to recognise what happened to Yazidis as genocide,” she said.

“And also to take accountability for all, against ISIS for their crimes against Yazidi Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria.

“Also I will tell them to rescue my community, because my community is a peaceful community [and] in that region are facing extinction.

“When we say extinction we mean that because they are really living in a desperate situation, facing an unknown future.

“So I will tell them to help my community and rescue them, and I think Australia as a great country can lead this mission.”

‘These criminals need to be brought to justice’

Ms Murad said in the last two years, since the attack on her village, there had been no serious action from world leaders to tackle the problem of IS.

“Because those criminals have been enslaving, they are enslaving Yazidi women … and they are committing all type of crimes — genocide crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes,” she said.

“And they are reaching also Europe and Western countries such as Belgium, Germany, France and even [the] USA.”

She said the first thing that needed to be done was to bring the IS fighters who attacked her village and other villages to justice in an international court.

“The world needs to, or must, cut the source of funding for this terrorism,” she said.

“And also fight them ideologically, not just militarily. Otherwise this is a very dangerous organisation for whole world and humanity.”

– ABC.

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