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World must 'protect' Yazidis says Murad in Nobel speech

December 10, 2018
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen awards the prizes to Iraqi Yazidi-Kurdish human rights activist and co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Nadia Murad and Congolese gynecologist and co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Denis Mukwege during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on Monday at the City Hall in Oslo, Norway. — AFP
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen awards the prizes to Iraqi Yazidi-Kurdish human rights activist and co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Nadia Murad and Congolese gynecologist and co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Denis Mukwege during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on Monday at the City Hall in Oslo, Norway. — AFP

OSLO — Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, a survivor of Daesh (the so-called IS) sex slavery, implored the global community to help free hundreds of women and girls still held by the militants in her Nobel acceptance speech Monday, saying the world must protect her people.

"The protection of the Yazidis and all vulnerable communities around the world is the responsibility of the international community," Murad told the ceremony in Oslo.

The 25-year-old shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, who has spent more than two decades treating appalling injuries inflicted on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-torn east.

Nobel committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said the pair were "two of the strongest voices in the world today".

"The fight for justice unites them, despite their very different backgrounds," she said on Monday.

Murad wept during Reiss-Andersen's description of the suffering of her people.

She survived the horrors of captivity under Daesh group in Iraq and Syria where they targeted Murad's Kurdish-speaking community.

Older women and men faced summary execution during the Daesh assault, which the United Nations has described as a possible genocide.

Captured in 2014, she suffered forced marriage, beatings and gang-rape before she was able to escape.

In her Nobel acceptance address Monday, Murad said that thousands of women and girls from her community had been kidnapped, raped and traded "in the 21st century, in the age of globalization and human rights".

The fate of some 3,000 women and girls is still unknown.

"Young girls at the prime of life are sold, bought, held captive and raped every day. It is inconceivable that the conscience of the leaders of 195 countries around the world is not mobilized to liberate these girls," she said.

Murad set about trying to escape, and managed to flee with the help of a Muslim family from Mosul.

Using false identity papers, she crossed the few dozen km to Iraqi Kurdistan, joining crowds of other displaced Yazidis in camps.

There, she learnt that six of her brothers and her mother had been killed.

With the help of an organization that assists Yazidis, she was re-united with her sister in Germany, where she lives today.

Even there, she says she is still fearful, for herself and other innocent women.

"I am a joyful person, I am an outgoing person, I don't want to live in fear," she told reporters at a press conference on Sunday.

Murad has dedicated herself to what she calls "our peoples' fight".

She and her friend Lamia Haji Bashar, joint recipients of the EU's 2016 Sakharov human rights prize, have advocated to reveal the fate of some 3,000 Yazidis who remain missing, presumed still in captivity.

She has also campaigned for displaced Yazidis to be taken in by European countries and for the acts committed by Daesh to be recognized internationally as genocide. — AFP


December 10, 2018
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