Yazidis plead with Canada not to repatriate ISIS members

The return of alleged ISIS members to Canada has brought trauma, worry and fear to those who were invited to Canada as a safe haven after the terrorist group all but destroyed an ancient community in northern Iraq.

“When I first heard the news, I felt the power leave my body,” Huda Ilyas Alhamad told CBC News in her Winnipeg apartment. He is one of the 1,200 survivors of the Yazidi genocide who live in Canada; he spent many years enslaved by ISIS members.

“I have to sit down immediately. I am sad and scared at the same time because on the one hand they have promised to protect us and bring us here and give us security, and on the other hand they have given us the same entrance. these people who were raped and torture us every day.”

The Yazidis are members of a Kurdish-speaking farming community in northern Iraq who practice their own monotheistic religion. They are the victims of one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, which are aiming to exterminate the Yazidis in a brutal campaign launched on August 3, 2014.

‘Heartbroken and betrayed’

Earlier this month, the federal government agreed to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children from northeastern Syria, where they are being held in Kurdish-run detention camps for ISIS members and their families.

The agreement was quickly followed a day later by an order from the Federal Court, ordered the government to also return the four peoplecurrently held in a Syrian prison, accused of being a member of ISIS.

Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, said Yazidis are grateful to Canada. Many have settled in Winnipeg.

“Canada was one of the first countries to respond to the Yazidi situation,” he said. “And they could not be happier or grateful that they will come to a country like Canada where they can feel safe and protected, in a country that supports all the values ​​of freedom, rights, justice, responsibility. and all these things that the Yazidi community wants. “

Naso praised the work of Winnipeg’s Jewish community to help gather families and private sponsors of Yazidi refugees, but he said others in the city are also helping.

“This has really been a grassroots local community effort to bring these families together and this is what Canada is all about,” he said.

The ISIS repatriation order, he said, made Yazidi families feel “sad and betrayed.”

“Many people are just crying because they think this news is unbelievable. It can’t be true,” he said.

“We have submitted an application for family reunification to reunite with family members who are in ISIS captivity. And here they bring the perpetrators of the crime of genocide to Canada. There is no evidence and witnesses are not here, they give free permission to massacre and terrorism.

“It’s really disappointing, not only for the Yazidi community, but for people in Canada who believe in liberal values, and we need to be a country that stands up for victims and survivors.”

A peaceful community is broken

“Before ISIS came, we were very happy. We had 13 people in my family,” Huda Alhamad told CBC News at her Winnipeg home. He was 17 years old in August 2014, when ISIS attacked.

“It’s always loud and noisy at home, but I like it. We’ll go to work, we’ll come home, we’ll have dinner as a family.”

As ISIS closed in, Huda’s family and thousands of others took refuge on the slopes of their traditional Yazidi refuge on Mount Sinjar. But they were arrested, along with thousands of other Yazidi civilians. ISIS members then began to segregate themselves by age and gender.

Huda said she believed the gunshots she heard as she was driven away after the initial separation of family members was the start of the massacre of older community members.

ISIS has different plans for different parts of the Yazidi population. The youngest children were taken from their families to convert to Islam and raised to become jihad fighters and suicide bombers. Thousands of boys and older boys were killed. Young women and girls, like Huda and her three sisters, were separated to be sold to ISIS members as slaves.

ISIS slave market

“They go around taking names, ages, family members, who they are related to, and then they start separating them by appearance,” Huda said. “They come in like we’re cows, what looks good, what doesn’t look good. The old, the ones with kids, how many kids they have.”

“My sister and I were taken to a separate room with many other young women and we were all sold.

“About 100 members of ISIS came to the room. There were about 200 of us, and they all came and started to just hold us for themselves. And I, together with another young Yazidi, was taken by one of the members of ISIS.”

10-year-old girls taken as slaves by ISIS members. After being raped for a while, members often sell. Many girls are sold multiple times.

Huda’s sisters were taken away by other ISIS members. Years would pass before he knew he had survived.

Huda’s parents and brother have not seen each other anymore. “Apart from the four family members I’m with here, and then my two sisters and brother who are now in the refugee camp, I’m not sure what happened to the others,” he said.

Yazidis told CBC News there is a misconception that women from ISIS are less culpable or less violent than men.

“Women are worse than ISIS fighters. Women will defeat us continuously,” Huda said. “They refused to give me food, I used to be beaten with cables by the wives of ISIS fighters, and they would laugh at me, they would spit on me, they would kick me, and every day. Then, when their husbands came, they would rape me.”

Naso said Huda’s experience with ISIS women is common among survivors.

“Almost everyone can tell you that in captivity, women play a role [ISIS] the fighters do in torturing them, in keeping them prisoners, in keeping records on them and saying what they do, constantly beating them, “he told CBC News. people do it.”

Children are stolen

Yazidis continue to come to Canada as individuals struggle to reunite with surviving family members destroyed by ISIS.

Ayad Alhussein is only 13 years old. He spent five years in ISIS captivity and another three years in a refugee camp. He arrived in Winnipeg just two months ago, rescued by two sisters he had forgotten he had.

“Now I’m just being told how hard my sister works with organizations in Winnipeg like Operation Ezra (a reunification program sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg) and the Yazidi Association of Canada,” he said. “How they sent documents three years ago and went back and forth with the government and other people to try to get me here.”

Ayad was young enough to be protected by ISIS when his family was captured. Twelve members of his family have not been seen since August 2014.

ISIS is raising the youngest Yazidi children to become jihadists and suicide bombers. Ayad forgot the original Kurmanji and learned to live in Arabic. He doesn’t remember his life before he was captured.

Forgotten identity

“I was five years old when I was arrested, so I didn’t know who my community was or who my family was or anything like that,” he said. “And like all the other little kids around me, I just did whatever it was. At first I was scared, but then it became normal.”

The routine, he said, included almost daily beatings (the men were told it would make them harder), military training, weapons training and religious indoctrination.

“And so on until I meet someone else [slightly older Yazidi captive boys] who says I am not part of this. I have family elsewhere,” he said. “Then I started to learn more as the years went by. And when I finally got to the camp after five years of captivity, that’s when I started learning my mother tongue.”

WATCH: The federal government will return women and children detained in Syria

Now, Ayad is in school in Winnipeg, learning English with the help of his brother. He said he is happy in Canada and hopes to become a doctor.

But recent developments have shaken the youngster.

“When I heard the news that they were going to bring ISIS members here, I was very scared. It wasn’t long before I came here,” he said. “The point is to come to a country like Canada to be offered safety and security. If they bring these people here, the terrorists, how can I feel safe?”

‘We don’t believe the government knows’

Huda said the news caused anxiety and panic.

“If I see someone who looks like one of them [ISIS] member, my heart began to beat a lot,” he said. “Sometimes I cry, sometimes I just have to put everything I’m doing and go straight home. And this happened in the last five years. This news just doubled and I feel it now.

“I’m afraid to send my children to school. What if they know some of us?”

Huda said it hurts to see her ISIS family reunited while her own sister is still living in dangerous refugee camps.

“This is all I can ask for, if I can be reunited with my sister here. We have worked on the documents, they have been sent for family reunification,” he said. “But it’s been almost three years and we haven’t heard anything about how the file went.”

Like many Yazidis, Huda said she believes the federal government and rights organizations working on behalf of suspected ISIS detainees are naive about the nature of the people they are helping.

“We don’t believe that the government really knows. I mean, we have tried to share our story many times. We tell about the atrocities that we have experienced,” he said.

“The government that admits it is genocide. Those who say yes, what they are doing to the Yazidi community is genocide. They are destroying women. They are separating families. They are trying to destroy this community. From the face of the earth.

“But here they are, bringing these members, people who chose to leave this country, this security, these freedoms, and go there and join this group that commits these crimes. So it doesn’t work for us. .”

‘No consequences’

Although talking about his captivity is wrenching, Huda said “it is more important than ever that people know exactly what kind of monsters, and we invite them to the country without repercussions.”

“If the Canadian government or anybody has any questions about what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria,” he added, “you can talk to me.

“If you have questions about what women and girls have to face, how they are tied up and treated like slaves, how they are sold, how children as young as 10 are raped, how girls are taken from their mothers and taken away. to a separate room and can hear them being raped. If you want to hear why we have to keep people like that, you can talk to me.

“I think I could talk for days about what happened to us and tell stories about the horrors I saw. tell me more?”