A desperate call for help for Iraq’s Yazidis and other religious minorities
On Aug. 15, 2014, Islamic State fighters who had surrounded her small Iraqi town for days ordered Nadia Murad and other Yazidis to walk to the local school, where men were to head upstairs, women downstairs. A sight along the way terrified the 20-year-old even more: backhoes at work. She’d seen videos of Islamic State […]Michelle Boorstein writes for The Washington Post:
On Aug. 15, 2014, Islamic State fighters who had surrounded her small Iraqi town for days ordered Nadia Murad and other Yazidis to walk to the local school, where men were to head upstairs, women downstairs. A sight along the way terrified the 20-year-old even more: backhoes at work. She’d seen videos of Islamic State fighters filling mass graves. One of her eight brothers said no, that couldn’t happen. The militant extremists weren’t about to kill a whole village of people.
Later that sweltering day, the militants shot dead five of her brothers and her mother, along with hundreds of other Yazidis. Murad and other young women were soon sent to religious courts to be registered by a photo and number as property of fighters who could then do with the women as they wished.
