Yazidi survivor calls on German authorities to reunite her with her mother’s body

KHANKE CAMP, Kurdistan Region - A 22 year-old woman captured by Islamic State (ISIS) when she was fifteen, held for seven years and not freed from her captor until earlier this year has called on the German government to allow her to enter the country in order to say goodbye to her mother’s body, after she died of a stroke on Sunday.

Sipan Khalil has endured an unbearable seven-year nightmare after being abducted by ISIS in August 2014, as the group launched their ethno-religious genocidal campaign against the Yazidis in the Sinjar region of Iraq. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. All twelve members of Sipan’s family were taken by ISIS militants, and the family was forced apart.

This summer, after her release from captivity, Sipan described the conditions she was forced to bear. “There was food deprivation and torture. We used to be locked in rooms and beaten up. Our condition was similar to that of the dead. There was no life at all, as if we were dead,” she told Rudaw.

Even as the caliphate collapsed, as ISIS was defeated in their last Syrian stronghold of Baghouz, Sipan’s captor continued to hold her hostage, forcing her to travel with him to the nearby town of Hajin, Deir ez-Zor province, and then to Daraa in southern Syria. 

Three months ago, he tried to take Sipan across the border to Lebanon, but he was killed during the journey. After his death, Sipan was able to escape.
 
Sipan’s release from her ordeal was bittersweet, as she reunited with other relatives in August this year at Khanke Camp, where she now lives. Her father and brother are still unaccounted for, and her mother and four siblings managed to escape as ISIS lost ground, moving to Germany upon their release. 

Sipan therefore has not seen her mother physically since the awful events of August 2014. On Sunday November 7, Sipan’s mother died of a stroke in Germany. She has not yet been buried, and Sipan is now urgently trying to secure a visa to the country in order to say goodbye to her body. 

“I have been under the hands of ISIS for seven years now, suffering in my country even after being rescued”, Sipan told Rudaw on Tuesday. “I have requested access to see my mother for months. With my mother now deceased, I still am unable to see her. Just seeing her once again would have been enough for me.”

Sipan has attempted to obtain a German visa in Erbil several times to no avail, and is calling on authorities in charge to “have mercy in their hearts and help me to see my mother’s body.”

To date, the Duhok Institute of Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology has sent over 1,000 rescued Yazidi women and children to Germany, but the German project has now come to an end.

Dr Memo Farhan, acting dean of the institute, has advised Sipan to contact the Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis, which is linked to the Kurdistan Region’s presidency. “They can prepare the paperwork and officially ask the [German] consulate to issue her a visa, explaining her situation and that she just wants to see her mother's body”, Farhan told Rudaw.

Over 120,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since the war against ISIS, according to the Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Of the 6,417 people abducted by ISIS, only 3,550 have been returned to their families.

Translation and video editing by Sarkawt Mohammed