A freed ISIS sex slave has bravely described her horrifying ordeal of daily rape and violent beatings at the hands of the terror group as she seeks justice for victims.
Kovan, now 24, was just 14 when she was taken prisoner with her family in Sinjar, Iraq.
She told Sky News of her horrific abuse at the Al Hol refugee camp by ISIS families, sold multiple times around claimed territory and witness to the rape of children as young as ten.
The first man who ‘bought her’ was twice her age and raped her on a daily basis for two years, she told the outlet.
When she tried to run away he dragged her by her hair and told her he would kill her and ‘bury me in the backyard if I didn’t do what he wanted’.
Kovan bravely told Sky News of her horrific ordeal, sold into sexual slavery with IS
She said the women were complicit in the abuse, preparing captives to be raped
Displaced Yazidi people fleeing violence from IS walk towards the Syrian border in 2014
Fighters from Islamic State drive through the streets of Mosul, Iraq in 2014
Kovan told Sky News she had not even started menstruating when she was ‘bought’ by an IS soldier.
She said she believed she was targeted as a Yazidi, referring to the religious group native to the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Yazidis – and the wider Kurdish people – have suffered horrendous abuse and persecution by neighbouring groups for centuries.
In 2014, IS invaded the Yazidi ancestral homeland of Sinjar, killing thousands and trafficking thousands more young women and children into slavery.
Within days, nearly 10,000 people had been killed – shot, beheaded or burned alive – or kidnapped, according to the Public Library of Science journal PLOS Medicine.
Ten years on, as survivors in refugee camps mark the anniversary of the genocide, many remain missing or unable to be identified from the scores of mass graves discovered.
Kovan was saved by the Syrian Democratic Forces during a daring raid into Al-Hol.
But even now she is unable to return home, among thousands of victims divided between camps of tents around Iraq with Sinjar still in ruins.
The fall of the Islamic State’s grip on the region saw Kurdish authorities take responsibility for children Kovan gave birth to out of rape, over fears for their safety.
She said that both of her children were born of rape by two men with the group.
Kovan believes both of them to be dead.
She said it was heartbreaking for her to be separated from her children and broke down as she said: ‘I love them, of course.’
This week, many Yazidis gathered to mark the anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide, carried out by the so-called Islamic State from August 3, 2014.
Many met at a memorial in Solagh, Sinjar on Saturday, too, to observe a minute’s silence and sing traditional songs.
Crowds attended the ‘grave of the mothers’, where 111 elderly women were shot dead or buried alive during IS’ horrific campaign.
Between 350,000 and 450,000 Yazidis in total are believed to have been displaced from the Sinjar district during the tragedy, branded ‘devil worshippers’ by IS.
Mass graves continue to be found and uncovered, revealing evidence of crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated by the terror group.
Today, more than 6,000 women and children are believed to remain captives of IS, with thousands still missing. Sky reports the figure closer to 3,000.
Almost 200,000 Yazidis are still displaced from the genocide, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
With conditions in Sinjar still dire, hundreds of survivors have escaped Iraq through programmes organised by Germany, Australia, the US, Canada and the Netherlands.
Since 2021, Iraq has recognised the genocide and provided reparations to victims in the form of monthly income, land and access to health care, livelihood and education.
But by September 2023, just 1,052 survivors were reported to have received reparations, with challenges still remaining to delivering support.
An Iraqi Yazidi woman grieves for relatives during a commemoration of the genocide in Sinjar
A Yazidi woman visits relatives in a cemetery during the commemoration in Sinjar on Aug 3
Yazidis in Khanke prepare to return to their homes in Sinjar on June 24, 2024
A human skull in a mass grave of Yazidis in Sinjar, pictured in 2015 after the IS genocide
Yazidi lawyers today have called for restorative justice in their plight for reparations.
‘What we really need from Iraq and KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] with support from the international community is a proper transitional justice legal framework,’ Natia Navrouzov of the Yazda organisation, supporting victims, said as victims commemorated the anniversary.
‘All the components of transitional justice. So, criminal accountability, truth telling, reparations.
‘And what is really missing is guarantees on non-repetition. People are asked to go back but nothing guarantees that another genocide won’t happen in five, 10, two years.’
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