Yazidi politician Vian Dakhil is a member of the Iraqi Parliament. She is also the one beacon of hope for thousands of Yazidi children who have been kidnapped for use as sex slaves or to brainwash into ISIS fighters. The Yazidis are an ancient Christian sect that have been forced from their homes in Syria and Iraq by the Islamic State. Four-hundred-and fifty thousand now live in refugee camps throughout the region.
NBC News reports on her recent comments, “Sometimes I hear some things I can’t imagine — girls, maybe 15 years old, with two or three ISIS men raping [them],” she said. “The Yazidi girls those terrorist [are] buying and selling, Yazidi girls sometimes [for] $100, sometimes one cigarette — they sell the girls and nobody does anything.”
In August of last year, when the ISIS purge of the Christian minority was in full swing on Mt. Sinjar, with girls jumping to their deaths rather than be taken alive by the Islamic State, Vian Dakhil made an impassioned plea to the Iraqi Parliament.
“An entire religion is being exterminated from the face of the earth,” she cried on the floor of the Iraqi Parliament. “We are being slaughtered under the banner of ’There is no god but Allah.’”
Western nations including the United States have sent humanitarian aid, but she is frustrated nothing is being done to help the captives. “I go to any country in the world and speak about them, about the massacres, the rapes — about the Yazidis,” she said. “We really need someone to help us.”
She wrote a letter to the American first lady, Michelle Obama, with a request for a campaign similar to #BringBackOurGirls, which was done for Nigerian Muslim girls who were captured by Boko Haram. All she received in return was silence.
“I can’t say nothing happened, because they send humanitarian help, they send money but it’s not enough,” she said. “I need someone to help those girls.”
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