Yezidi spiritual council will welcome children of ISIS rape victims
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – In a breakthrough move on Wednesday, senior Yezidi (Ezidi) leaders in the disputed town of Sinjar (Shingal) said they would welcome back children born to Ezidi women due to rape by Islamic State members.
According to the Ezidi faith’s strict devotion that members of the religious minority must marry within their community to preserve their religion, many rescued Ezidi women have been forced to decide whether to abandon their children or remain in exile with them.
The Yezidi Supreme Spiritual Council said in a statement on Wednesday that it would make an exception to the rule and called on all members of the faith “to accept all survivors and consider what they have been subjected to beyond their control.”
Ezidi rights groups welcomed the decision. Murad Ismael, the Co-founder and Executive Director of Yazda Organization, described the ruling “a historic move.”
“It is important to understand that this is a stretch for the basis of Yazidi faith where the religion is passed through bloodline of both parents,” he wrote on Twitter.
In a historic move, the Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council issues a statement to welcome all survivors, including women and their children born out of rape. We now hope to retrieve hundreds of women and their children from Syria. pic.twitter.com/frqvqyXBMU
— Murad Ismael (@murad_ismael) April 24, 2019
Ahmed Khudida Burjus, the deputy executive director of Yazda, said the decision was “very important.”
“We believe those women deserve to be returned back, including their children,” he was quoted as saying by the Independent. “They need our support, our respect, and our help.”
The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Iraq’s Ezidi-majority city of Shingal in August 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the Ezidi community and the killing of thousands, now recognized by the United Nations as an act of genocide.
Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region while others resettled in neighboring countries or Western states.
Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.