IS 성노예 실태 고발 야지디족 “10대 어린 소녀들도 납치···수백명 자살”

* ‘아시아엔’ 연수 외국기자가 작성한 기사의 한글요약본과 원문을 함께 게재합니다.

[아시아엔=라드와 아시라프·번역 최정아 기자] 수니파 무장단체 이슬람 국가(Islamic State, IS)의 성노예로 고통을 받고 있는 야지디족 여성들에 대한 국제적 관심이 높아지고 있다. 문화·종교적인 이유로 성폭행 피해 사실을 숨겨왔던 피해자 여성들이 세상밖으로 나와 IS의 잔혹성을 고발하기 시작한 것이다.

이라크 소수종파인 야지디족은 그동안 IS의 표적이 되어 왔다. IS는 이슬람 경전 쿠란에 이교도(비무슬림)에 대한 성폭력이 허용된다고 주장하고 있다. UN은 야지디족 여성들을 납치해 무참히 성폭행하고 노예시장에 내다놓고 있는 IS를 고발했다. 지난 8월19일 <CNN>과의 인터뷰에 응한 한 12세 소녀는 IS 조직원이 자신을 성폭행하면서 “이슬람 경전 꾸란에 따르면 이교도에 대한 성폭력이 허용된다. 나를 성폭행함으로써 자신은 신에게 더 가까이 다가간다는 말을 했다”고 밝혔다.

또한 야지디족 출신인 아미나 사이드 하산 전 이라크 국회의원도 5일(현지시간) <CNN>과의 인터뷰에서 “IS에 납치돼 수차례 인신매매와 성폭행을 당한 야지디족 여성 최소 100명 이상이 스스로 목숨을 끊고 있다”며 IS에 납치된 이라크 소수민족 야지디족 여성들의 참혹한 실태를 전했다.

야지디족 피해여성들을 도우려는 국제사회의 도움에도 불구하고, 성노예로 붙잡힌 많은 소녀들이 IS 캠프에서 두려움에 떨며 자살을 하고 있는 것으로 전해졌다. 도나텔라 로베라 국제앰네스티 위기대응자문은 “성노예로 붙잡힌 이들은 10대 청소년 또는 그보다 어린 소녀들도 포함돼 있다”고 말했다.

Yazidi women and their struggle against ISIS

After their husbands and families were killed, Yazidi women started taking it upon themselves to defend themselves and their territories from ISIS forces. Whether they were fighting women or refugees in one of the camps or women who were tortured by ISIS and managed to escape them, they all have a story to tell.

The Yazidis, a small Iraqi minority who believe in a single god who created the Earth and left it in the care of a peacock angel, have been subjected to large-scale persecution by ISIS, which accuses them of devil worship.

The United Nations has accused ISIS of committing genocide against the Yazidis, while ISIS claims the Quran justifies taking non-Muslim women and girls captive, and permits their rape.

ISIS have been actively capturing Yazidi women and selling them, all of them falling in the hands of jihadists and when it comes to women who were kidnapped, tortured and raped by ISIS, subjected to “everything you could imagine for women among savages,” most of these women deny they were raped because of the culture of shame around sex, but these women are slowly coming out and reaching for help.

As for women brigades in places like Iraq, it’s not that hard to imagine a full brigade of women fighting in Sinjar which was claimed by ISIS as they killed it’s men and took its women and children for themselves. Most of these women say, that death is better than being caught by ISIS.

One of the rescued women was a 35-year-old woman with six children ? all of whom had been captured, bought and sold in ISIS’ slave markets. In her desperate call for help, she described what had happened to them: “They loaded two big trucks from the village and took them somewhere, I don’t know where. When they were loading people on to the truck, a woman started arguing with them, so they killed her.”

Despite her horrific ordeal, the kidnapped woman in this recording was one of the lucky ones ? she got out, eventually, as she retells her story to the Guardian.

Another victim, a 20-year-old Yazidi woman, who says she was held as a sex slave by ISIS, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that her captor was a fighter who told her he was from the United States.

Bazi (as she was asked to be called) told Amanpour she was captured by ISIS when the extremist group overran the city of Sinjar in Iraq, in August 2014. She was taken to Raqqa, Syria, which ISIS claims for its capital. There, she was auctioned off as a slave along with 10 other girls.

The American, she said, sold off the nine other girls and kept her for himself. and she recounts the horrors she faced, “Before raping me, he would pray for like fifteen minutes or half an hour. And after that, even if it was 2 a.m., 3 a.m., after raping me, he would go take a shower and pray again.”. When she finally managed to escape helping another girl with, she had already suffered from several failed attempts and sacrificing herself to protect other girls from rape.

Despite the help other Iraqis are trying to offer to these women, it’s hard to save all of them, and while some individual efforts managed to save over a hundred of them, more are committing suicide inside the ISIS camp in fear of what’s going to happen to them next.