Erbil (Kurdistan Region of Iraq): Words are not enough, action is absolutely necessary. That is what the former IS sex slave who survived by escaping and reaching the activist, Nadia Murad, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday 20 December 2016. One year after she gave her emotional testimony to the same organization about the abuse she experienced at the hands of IS.
“I don’t know what else it will take to move you,” she told the council. She finds it deeply regrettable that there is such slow progress in ending the genocide of the Yazidis and bringing the culprits to justice.
“I don’t understand why the bodies of my murdered mother and brothers are still lying in mass graves, which are unprotected and unexamined,” she said. “I don’t understand how IS militants can publish evidence of their crimes on the Internet, without being arrested for them. I don’t know why, when IS has no friends in this council, that you are still not moving forward.”
Murad was speaking at a special session of the council to discuss human trafficking in conflict situations. In September, she was appointed UN Goodwill Ambassador for Dignity for Survivors of Human Trafficking.
Over 3,000 women, children and men who belong to the minority called the Yazidis are still in captivity. More than 350,000 have been displaced from their homes in the Kurdish region, she told the council.
Members of her own family are still in IS captivity: She told the council the story of her 13-year-old nephew Malik, who has been indoctrinated and trained as a child soldier after years in IS captivity: After a desperate search, her family found Malik and arranged an escape attempt for him, but he refused, saying that “Yazids are infidels who must convert to and join IS.”
“I’m sick with worry that he’ll be on the front lines soon,” Murad said.
Murad praised that there is some progress in that a mechanism has been established to collect evidence for IS’s crimes. “But,” she said, “time is running out. And words of support are not enough. action is needed.”
She urged Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to ask the Security Council to establish an international independent commission for Iraq. This “to investigate and document the crimes committed by IS.”, She also added her willingness to face her abusers in court to bring justice to her and all victims of war and terror.
“My fight is a fight for justice,” she told the influential council members. “You, the world’s most powerful nations can stop this.”
Source: http://rudaw.net/mobile/english/kurdistan/201220161 – Januar 2016
Photo Credit: NRK Urix
