By Wiroud Salih, KirkukNow
By Wiroud Salih, KirkukNow
“My trip was long and exhausting. Lots of the Ezidi girls abducted passed away as Daesh (the Islamic State ISIS) has tried all types of barbaric crimes against them,” said Siban Khalil, an Ezidi survivor of IS slavery.
Khjalil was leading an ordinary life up to August 2014 when IS stormed the village of Kojo, in Shingal district, home to the Ezidi community, an ancient monotheist religion, west of Mosul.
The militants killed thousands of men and enslaved, kids, women and girls.
“It was horrifying. They took the girls aged 13-25 to Mosul and from there to Riqqa and other territories controlled by Daesh in Syria.”
The figures by the Office for Rescue of Abducted Ezidis by Kurdistan Regional Government KRG show that out of 6,417 abducted Ezidis, up today 3,550 have been rescued from IS, 2005 of them were children, and 1,206 women.
Siban and her borther.
Siban has become alike thousands of Ezidi girls a victim of sex slavery and physical abuse for seven years at the hands of several militants of different nationalities.
“I have known none of them. They were selling and buying me and I had no say,” Khalil recounts.
“I have known none of them. They were selling and buying me and I had no say.”
The sexual slavery was part of a long series of abuse such as detention, physical abuse, long hours of work. She was cooking for long hours, then washing dishes and plates till end of the day then back to prison to lay down behind closed doors.
“I was about to lose hope of being freed once. We as Ezidi girls were moved each week from a place to another. We were reporting our places and instead of freeing us, it was bombed the very next day.”
Poos Siban was once shot by a bullet in her belly and another time escaped a mine explosion.
“I was once shot by a bullet. I had a surgery by a militant. In another incident, a Lebanese militant was trying to take me to his hometown when a mine exploded, he was killed and my foot was injured.”
Siban bravely walks to a village where a family hosts here for a year and half then she contacts the Ezidi House in Hasaka Kurdish town in Syria.
She safely makes it back to Shingal in July. Few hours after her arrival home, she meets her brother. Her father is still missing while her mother and other sisters migrate to Europe.
“My story was tiring yet the strangest feeling I had was when I sat next to my grave in my village,” a symbolic one for each Ezidi went missing.
