by WorldTribune Staff, May 2, 2017
Despite the “unimaginable” brutality the Yazidi Christian community is enduring at the hands of Islamic State (ISIS), not one of the terror group’s jihadists has been prosecuted for war crimes, human rights groups say.
In the past couple of years, ISIS has executed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis in Iraq and Syria.
Mass rapes of women and young girls are routine. ISIS sells Yazidi girls as young as 9 for sex.
Last year, 21-year-old Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad Basee began speaking out about the plight of Yazidis, saying that what ISIS is making women go through is “more difficult than death,” the Christian Post reported on May 1.
“A year and a half has passed and the genocide against the Yazidis is continuous. We die every day because we see the world silent in the face of our plight,” Murad said.
“My mother saw them killing my brothers and then they took my mother and killed her. I was already orphaned as I didn’t have a father, all I had in the war was my mother.”
Several Yazidis have been rescued during operations to liberate Mosul, ISIS’s last main stronghold in Iraq.
“What these women and girls have endured is unimaginable,” said Lise Grande, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, according to a report by Al Jazeera.
The UN warned that the Yazidis have been subjected to the “most horrific of atrocities.” Other religious minorities, such as Christians, have also been heavily targeted, the UN said.
International human rights lawyers, such as Amal Clooney, have noted that no ISIS jihadists have been prosecuted for war crimes.
“This is a global threat. It needs a global response. And part of that response must be a judicial one. It cannot be only on the battlefield. You can’t defeat ISIS on the battlefield alone, because you have to also deal with future recruiting,” Clooney said.
“I think trials and exposing the brutality of ISIS and trying to make a dent in some of their shiny propaganda by showing that it’s not a holy war and showing what they’re really doing to children, to women, is one way to help that,” she added.