ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Yezidi activist Nadiya Murad, who escaped ISIS captivity in 2014 and sought refuge in Germany, is due in the Kurdistan Region next month to meet with top officials and rally support for war-scarred Yezidi women.
The 23-year-old campaigner has already managed to speak at international forums, including the United Nations Security Council, where she shared her horrifying experiences while imprisoned by the Islamic State group.
Nadiya’s brother Saeed Murad told Rudaw that Kurdish President Masoud Barzani and the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had earlier expressed support for Nadiya and wished to see her.
“Nadiya will be meeting with a number of Iraqi and Kurdish officials about the Yezidi condition both in the country but also in Europe,” Saeed said.
He added that she would ask Kurdish and Iraqi leaders to call on European nations to embrace Yezidi refugees, many of whom could be deported to Iraq in accordance with a recent deal between the European Union and Turkey.
“She is now in Greece where she campaigns against deportation of fellow Yezidis,” Saeed said.
Under the Turkey-EU deal, large numbers of migrants across Europe could be deported to their original countries as many of them did not meet the EU criteria for refugee status.
“But the condition of Yezidis is quite different because of the trauma most of them have experienced after the ISIS assaults,” Saeed said.
He added that great numbers of these Yezidi migrants were young women and children who had been sexually attacked by their militant captors and suffered injuries for life.
Nadiya’s mother and six of her brothers were all executed in the chaotic days of August 2014, when their village fell to ISIS. Her two sisters were also abducted by the militants, without a trace.
According to the Iraqi migration office in Erbil, some 40,000 Yezidis have left Iraq and Kurdistan for Germany, where already a half-million-large Yezidi community has been settled for decades.
Nadiya told Rudaw earlier that she did not encourage her fellow Yezidis to leave their land and seek refuge in Europe.
“But I don’t want my family to return to a place which is always at risk of falling to attackers,” she said in an interview.
The Kurdish government has said it is pushing for international recognition of the genocide against the Yezidis.
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