A pair of Yazidi women’s advocates have been awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The 50,000-euro prize for human rights has been handed out since 1988.
Iraqis Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, who hail from a Yazidi village in Iraq that was overrun by the self-styled “Islamic State” in 2014, were named Thursday as recipients of the Sakharov Prize. They were nominated by European parliamentary deputies from multiple parties. The laureates’ names were announced at about midday by European Parliament President Martin Schulz, and an award ceremony is slated for December 14.
Thousands of Yazidi girls and women were forced into sex slavery by the extremist group in recent years. The two award winners managed to escape and raise global attention to rampant human rights abuses.
Murad, now aged 23, was held by IS militants in Mosul but escaped in November 2014, reached a refugee camp and eventually
made her way to Europe. She has since become an advocate for the Yazidis, and refugee and women’s rights in general.
Bashar, 18, was captured in the same raid as Murad and also kept as a sex slave by IS. She escaped in March but was badly
disfigured and blinded in one eye when a landmine went off as she fled. Two companions were killed. She has since undergone reconstructive surgery and works as an advocate for members of the Yazidi sect.
Both women reside in Germany.
The Yazidi are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Hard-line Islamists consider them pagans or devil worshippers. The United Nations said in a report in June that IS had committed genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the religious community of 400,000 people through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.
Kurdish forces – with arms and air cover from the US-led military coalition – retook the moutnainous Sinjar region in the end of 2014.