Women commit suicide to escape ISIS slavery

Ameena Saeed Hasan, a former Iraqi lawmaker who offers a lifeline for women to escape from slavery at the hands of ISIS, says a lot of such women have committed suicide, than allow themselves to be repeatedly raped.

The Islamic militants captured thousands of Yazidi women and children, and killed the men. ISIS claims the Quran justifies taking non-Muslim women and girls captive, and permits their rape.

The Yazidis, a small Iraqi minority who believe in a single god who created the Earth and left it in the care of a peacock angel, have been subjected to large-scale persecution by ISIS, which accuses them of devil worship.

The United Nations has accused ISIS of committing genocide against the Yazidis.

Together with her husband, Khalil, Hasan manages a network to smuggle the women out: she takes the calls, and Khalil makes the dangerous journey to the Iraq-Syria border to bring them to safety.

So far, the couple has rescued more than a hundred people. One of the first was a 35-year-old woman with six children — all of whom had been captured, bought and sold in ISIS’ slave markets.

Read also: ISIS prepares to hit UK, official says

In her desperate call to Hasan, she described what had happened to them: “They loaded two big trucks from the village and took them somewhere, I don’t know where. When they were loading people on to the truck, a woman started arguing with them, so they killed her.”

Hasan says many women, repeatedly raped and abused by their captors, have taken their own lives rather than wait to be saved.

“I have some pictures of the girls who have committed suicide … when they lose hope for rescue and when ISIS many times sell them and rape them … I think there is maybe 100. We lost contact with most of them.”

Many have joined the fight against ISIS; instead of bombs and bullets, Hasan’s weapon is her phone; with it, she offers hope, however distant, and a promise that help is coming.

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