Yazidi women fear returning to broken land filled with rubble and brutality

Islamic State militants have been trying to exterminate the Yazidis in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq for a decade. They massacred thousands of men and raped and enslaved girls and women. Now, survivors face new fears as the Iraqi government plans to close the tent camps where they live in other parts of the country to encourage them to return to the areas they fled.

Several Yazidi women who have survived the horrors and are living in affected refugee camps have traveled to the UK to perform a series of choral performances in an attempt to showcase their cultural heritage and highlight their community, an ancient religious and ethnic minority. dilemma.

Silent tears rolled down Amira’s cheeks as she told the BBC about the horrific atrocities committed by militants when they seized the Yazidis’ ancestral homeland in 2014.

Warning: This article contains graphic depictions of violence

Amira managed to escape to the mountains as men in her community were shot to death and women and girls raped and enslaved.

But her two sisters are among those who work in the family of Islamic State (IS) fighters who claim Yazidis are devil worshipers.

She said that unlike many slaves, Amira’s sisters were not raped because they were married.

Yet a nun whose husband was killed by militants is beaten every day.

But she was threatened with unspeakable cruelty.

“She had given birth to her baby 15 days before she was arrested, and they told her: ‘We will kill your baby and force you to eat his flesh,'” Amira said.

Her voice fell to a near whisper as she described how her other sister Dellal, who was pregnant at the time of her arrest, lost her baby daughter at five months old because she could not produce the milk to feed her. . Delal attempted suicide but was stopped by her four-year-old son. “Her child is only four years old,” Amira said. “He said to her, ‘Mom, please don’t kill us. Let’s get out of here.

When she later fed him a tomato from the refrigerator, she and her two surviving children were locked in a room for a week as punishment with no food, just a small bottle of water and a carton of milk.

The Iraqi government plans to close the camp where tens of thousands of Yazidis have lived since 2014, a terrifying prospect for many of them.

The limited services currently provided in the camp will cease at the end of July, and they will be offered a grant to return to the Sinjar region, where the massacre took place.

“The situation is very dangerous,” Vian Dahir, the only Yazidi member of Iraq’s parliament, told the BBC. “There are many armed groups there and the Iraqi government forces are weak.”

Much of the town of Sinjar remains in ruins, she said. “No houses, no schools, no hospitals, nothing.”

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also expressed their concerns, saying the camps should not be forcibly closed. Farha Bhoyroo said: “No one should return to a place where they may be at risk of irreparable harm or without access to basic facilities such as water, health care, housing and jobs to help them regain dignity. A place to live.

The agency expressed concern that some people displaced from Sinjar may end up with no choice but to stay in the decommissioned camp.

Hadiya, 28, who was also part of a choir visit organized by the Amal Foundation charity, told the BBC that before 2014 she had “everything – including a very big house”.

Now, she and her family live in a tent measuring 4m (13 feet) long and 3m wide “like prisoners.” The summers are hot and the winters are cold. But at least, she felt safe there.

Hadiya is also still haunted by horrific memories – including what happened to her cousin Ghazal.

Ghazal was captured when he was eight years old and forced to marry two years later. When 14-year-old Hadiya was rescued in 2020, she said she was raising two children but had to keep them and was brainwashed into thinking Yazidis were “bad people.”

Ghazal, now 18, remains disturbed and withdrawn. Her sister, now 19, is one of hundreds of women and girls still missing.

“No one asked for them,” complained Zahra Amra, office manager of the Dohuk Amal Foundation, bitterly. She has also worked as a translator with singers in the UK.

“No one is helping us find our sisters. Too many ISIS fighters have been released from prison. When ISIS came, no one helped us, and now they want us to go back to Sinjar.

In August 2014, Zahra lost a classmate and friend. Her grandmother was shot because she was too weak to climb Mount Sinjar, where tens of thousands of Yazidis have fled as the Islamic State advances.

But most importantly, she said, she lost the future she and her friends had been planning, and the collective trauma and sense of abandonment ran deep.

“We don’t feel safe,” she said. “And we don’t trust anyone.”

You can hear the Yazidi Women’s Peace Choir on BBC Radio 3’s Music Planet and via BBC Sounds.