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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Naveen Rasho, a 24-year-old Yezidi journalist, has been reunited with her family after five years held captive by the Islamic State (ISIS) group.
Naveen was kidnapped in 2014 when ISIS seized vast swathes of northern Iraq, including the Yezidi homeland of Shingal. ISIS committed genocide against the ethnoreligious minority, and thousands of women were sold into sexual slavery.
Some 6,417 Yezidis were abducted by ISIS in summer 2014. According to the most recent data from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Yezidi Affairs Office, the fate of 2,992 Yezidis is still unknown.
Naveen says she made five unsuccessful attempts to escape ISIS captivity.
The House acts as a transitional location for rescued Yezidis before they are transferred back to their families in northern Iraq.
Before she was captured, Naveen worked for two years as a radio journalist and presenter for Voice of Shingal Mountain.
“I couldn’t tell them I was a journalist because I feared they might kill me. If they were to find out that I would write about them in a newspaper or talk about them on the radio, they surely would have killed me,” she told Rudaw.
Naveen showed Rudaw pictures taken during her time in captivity, donning the all-black niqab women, including Yezidi captives, wore under ISIS rule.
On the day ISIS swept into Shingal, Naveen was captured along with her mother and two nieces on the outskirts of town as they fled to nearby Snune.
None of her fellow journalist fell into ISIS hands, she said.
Asked how she was found in al-Hol Camp, she said: “After two and a half months I revealed my identity as a Yezidi to two journalists, a Kurd and a foreigner, when they came to al-Hol Camp a few times.”
The journalists then helped her leave the camp.
Al-Hol has been divided into three sections, dividing Syrians, Iraqis, and foreigners, she explained.
“I was among the Europeans where there was no electricity, TV, phones at all,” she said. I was “very afraid of revealing that I am a Yezidi,” she added.
When ISIS captured her, they “took me to Syria and I stayed there for one week. They later took me back to Mosul and several different places around Mosul. They finally took me back to Syria where I was put in Raqqa and its surroundings and finally to Baghouz before I ended up in al-Hol camp.”
Naveen’s father says her return has brought joy back to the family. He described the moment he received her phone call on May 19.
“When she called me, telling me ‘Dad I am free and have reached the Yezidi House’, I was very happy, and I was elated by her call,” Rasho Darwesh told Rudaw.
Now living in Ba’adrah, Duhok province, Naveen describes how it feels to be free after her long captivity.
“It is like when you break a walnut shell and the walnut is out. This is what happened to me after five years. I have come to the world anew. It is a very joyful life that I have come out of a prison after five years,” she added.
After a period of rest, she plans to return to her job as a journalist. She someday hopes to write an autobiography.
Naveen was kidnapped in 2014 when ISIS seized vast swathes of northern Iraq, including the Yezidi homeland of Shingal. ISIS committed genocide against the ethnoreligious minority, and thousands of women were sold into sexual slavery.
Some 6,417 Yezidis were abducted by ISIS in summer 2014. According to the most recent data from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Yezidi Affairs Office, the fate of 2,992 Yezidis is still unknown.
Naveen says she made five unsuccessful attempts to escape ISIS captivity.
Alongside 13 others rescued from al-Hol camp in northern Syria, she was returned to Shingal in June 2019 by Yezidi House – a shelter run by the Kurdish-led authority of northern Syria in Hasakah province.
The House acts as a transitional location for rescued Yezidis before they are transferred back to their families in northern Iraq.
Before she was captured, Naveen worked for two years as a radio journalist and presenter for Voice of Shingal Mountain.
“I couldn’t tell them I was a journalist because I feared they might kill me. If they were to find out that I would write about them in a newspaper or talk about them on the radio, they surely would have killed me,” she told Rudaw.
Naveen showed Rudaw pictures taken during her time in captivity, donning the all-black niqab women, including Yezidi captives, wore under ISIS rule.
On the day ISIS swept into Shingal, Naveen was captured along with her mother and two nieces on the outskirts of town as they fled to nearby Snune.
None of her fellow journalist fell into ISIS hands, she said.
Asked how she was found in al-Hol Camp, she said: “After two and a half months I revealed my identity as a Yezidi to two journalists, a Kurd and a foreigner, when they came to al-Hol Camp a few times.”
The journalists then helped her leave the camp.
Al-Hol has been divided into three sections, dividing Syrians, Iraqis, and foreigners, she explained.
“I was among the Europeans where there was no electricity, TV, phones at all,” she said. I was “very afraid of revealing that I am a Yezidi,” she added.
When ISIS captured her, they “took me to Syria and I stayed there for one week. They later took me back to Mosul and several different places around Mosul. They finally took me back to Syria where I was put in Raqqa and its surroundings and finally to Baghouz before I ended up in al-Hol camp.”
Naveen’s father says her return has brought joy back to the family. He described the moment he received her phone call on May 19.
“When she called me, telling me ‘Dad I am free and have reached the Yezidi House’, I was very happy, and I was elated by her call,” Rasho Darwesh told Rudaw.
Now living in Ba’adrah, Duhok province, Naveen describes how it feels to be free after her long captivity.
“It is like when you break a walnut shell and the walnut is out. This is what happened to me after five years. I have come to the world anew. It is a very joyful life that I have come out of a prison after five years,” she added.
After a period of rest, she plans to return to her job as a journalist. She someday hopes to write an autobiography.
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