Former ISIS sex slave tells lawmakers the USA must step up efforts to 'terminate Daesh'
A young Yazidi woman who was forced into sex slavery by the Islamic State aka Daesh urged the United States to step up its efforts to defeat the terror group.
"The USA must act," Nadia Murad told the U.S. Senate Homeland Security committee, as quoted by CNN Politics. "We must terminate Daesh (ISIS) and all such terror."
According to The New York Times, Murad was abducted by ISIS from her village in northern Iraq when she was 19 and was kept as a sex slave for more than two months. She managed to escape in 2014 and, CNN reports, a Muslim family in Mosul helped her to get fake Islamic identifcation in order to flee ISIS territory.
"I was freed, but I do not enjoy the feeling of the freedom because those who committed these crimes have not been held accountable," she said, with the assistance of a translator.
She also recalled that, like her, thousands of Yazidi women and girls were raped and enslaved by members of ISIS. A report by the United Nations in January states that women and children are subjected to sexual violence, "particularly in the form of sexual slavery." The report estimates that around 3,500 people are being held by ISIS, and while some are from other ethnic and religious minority communities, the captives are "predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi community."
Murad also reminded her audience that if small religious minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians are not protected, "they will be wiped out."
"Daesh will not give up their weapons unless we force them to give up their weapons. The Yazidi people cannot wait," she said, adding that the United States and other countries need "to establish a safe and protected zone for Iraqi and Syrian religious minorities." She also expressed that if ISIS is not stopped, "they would deliver their crimes everywhere."
"What has been happening has been happening under the name of Islam," she said. "The Muslims must be the first ones to resist this ... We have not seen that Daesh have been labeled as an infidel group within Islam by any Muslim country."
She also suggested that ISIS be taken to the international criminal court.
In response to Sen. Tom Carper's question if the United States should accept more refugees, she replied, "Every country has the right to protect itself and its borders, but the people who are escaping from the religious discrimination and genocide should not face closed doors."