ISIS' 'Most Wanted Woman' Fighting to Help Free Thousands of Girls Being Kept as Sex Slaves
A Yazidi activist, known as the Islamic State terror group's "most wanted woman," said she will continue to fight on the global stage for the thousands of girls and children whom the radicals are torturing and using as sex slaves.
"At the moment trying to keep us in the spotlight is falling largely on my shoulders but I can't be everywhere at the same time," Vian Dakhil told Reuters, as she urged more Yazidis who have seen IS' brutalities to speak out and run for office.
She is one of only two ethnic Yazidis in Iraq's 328-member parliament, and wishes to change that.
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"Our fight is not over. We aren't even half-way through what we need to do. Staying in government gives me more power to help my people," she added, speaking of ambitions to get more Yazidis involved in the Iraqi government.
Dakhil started advocating for the plight of the Yazidis in August 2014, just months after IS began its genocidal campaign throughout Iraq and Syria, murdering scores of Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities, and enslaving many others.
A demographer with John Hopkins University and the London School of Economics and Political Science revealed that the terror group killed 3,100 Yazidis and enslaved 6,800 others in a matter of days.
And although coalition ground forces, backed by air power from the U.S. and other allies, have liberated significant territory from IS in Iraq, the United Nations estimates that as many as 3,400 girls are still being kept as sex slaves, according to Reuters.
Dakhil recently spoke at the ninth annual Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway, where she pleaded with world leaders not to forget what is being done to minorities at the hands of extremists.
"Nearly three years on, people forget about us but the misery and tragedy is still there and just as real with 420,000 Yazidis living as refugees in Kurdistan in very miserable conditions and thousands of girls still in captivity and tortured," she said.
The activist has in the past shared horrifying stories of what IS has been forcing Yazidis to do.
"One of the mothers calls me ... she said 'for two days the ISIS doesn't give me any food' and they separated her children. One of them is 3 years and another is 5 years, after two days they give her rice with meat. After she's eating, she tell her this is your boy — 3 years," Dakhil recalled back in 2015.
"She tells me please, I can't, I don't know what can I do — I'm eating my son. This is what happened with those women under ISIS control and nobody cares."
Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, said in 2015 that IS demands "nothing less than the conversion of all Christians and Yizidis to Islam under penalty of death for men and enslavement for women and children."
"The beheadings, crucifixions, and other means ISIS uses to slaughter unarmed Christian and Yizidi men — from priests and bishops to destitute migrant workers — have been proudly displayed by the ultra violent group on social media and have drawn condemnations worldwide," Shea pointed out.
