-
Erbil-based journalist Jacqueline “Jacky” Sutton, who was mysteriously found dead in an Istanbul airport on Saturday, was a media, human rights and development expert whose expertise was often sought out by Rudaw.
In an exclusive and unreleased video interview, the UK’s Sutton spoke to Rudaw’s Julie Adnan earlier this year in Dohuk about the trend of female fighters among the ranks of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. The footage is believed to be some of the last of Sutton.
In the video, an edited version of which is available here, Sutton, 50, spoke harshly about the male-dominated ideology that lured women to the terror group and indoctrinated them.
“[ISIS] gives them a sense that they will have some kind of power relationship with the men on an equal footing; that they will be honored and respected as mothers, brides, wives and sisters,” Sutton told Rudaw.
She continued: “They [think they] will have some sense of autonomy and agency. It is a very romantic ideal that ISIS is peddling to these young women, in the same way that the cigarette manufactures used to peddle the idea of smoking as being cool. The reality of course is very, very different.”
Sutton was a former BBC journalist and development expert who was appointed acting country director in Iraq for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) at the end of June. She began working for the United Nations in Iraq in 2008, and subsequently ran media and elections projects for the UN Development Program.
According to the IWPR website, Sutton was working on a PhD on the position of female journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment