INTERNATIONAL
BY STEVEN ERTELT, MICAIAH BILGER JUN 6, 2016 | WASHINGTON, DC
Nineteen girls who are members of the Yazidi religious minority group in Mosul were burned alive for their refusal to have sex with their ISIS terrorist captors. The news is the latest persecution by ISIS against women — which also includes forcing them into sexual slavery and forcing them to have abortions if they become pregnant.
Here’s the latest:
Nineteen Iraqi Yazidi girls who refused to have sex with their Islamic State captors were placed in iron cages and burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds in Mosul on Thursday, activists and witnesses say.
“The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching,” a witness told ARA News. “Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment.”
ISIS took the girls – and thousands of others — as sex slaves after overtaking a northern Iraqi region they called home in August 2014.
“They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants,” local activist Abdullah al-Malla told ARA News.
As LifeNews reported earlier this year, those fortunate enough to escape the Islamic terrorist group are bringing back stories of sickening abuses against men, women, children and unborn babies, too. The New York Times recently published several accounts of women who ISIS fighters captured, sold into sex slavery, raped and then forced to have abortions.
Pregnant at the time of her capture, 20-year-old “H.” was repeatedly pressured to abort her child by the ISIS fighter who claimed her as his property. She said she was raped repeatedly, despite an Islamic law prohibiting sex with pregnant slaves.
In October, LifeNews reported other women’s stories of forced abortions with ISIS. A 21-year-old woman known as Bushra said her friend was three-months pregnant when she was captured by ISIS and forced to have an abortion.
She explained, “One of my friends was pregnant. Her child was about three months in the womb. They took her into another room. There were two doctors and they did the abortion. Afterwards, they brought her back. I asked her what happened and how they did it. She said the doctors told her not to speak.”
Bushra said the abortion left the woman in so much pain that she could not talk or move. Later Bushra too was raped repeatedly and told that she had to leave everything behind to marry an ISIS fighter. “They told us, ‘Give up your family, give up that you are Yazidi — you are now Muslims. We are going to marry you; each fighter will have one of you,’” Bushra said.
Another report in April 2015 found that doctors in the Middle East have been doing illegal abortions on girls as young as 9 who were kidnapped and raped by ISIS fighters.
According to the New York Times, an Islamic law provides some protection against rape for pregnant women and girls; however, the law could be leading more ISIS fighters to force women to abort so that they can abuse them again.