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Gallery|Humanitarian Crises

‘I don’t want to be considered as an ex-slave or just a survivor’

Some Yazidi women have found the strength to go back and live in Sinjar, years after ISIL carried out a genocide.

The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Yazidi women of different ages cry during the ceremony marking of the opening of the mass graves in Kojo, Sinjar. They are the mothers, sisters, wives of the hundreds of men killed by ISIL in 2014 in what the UN said amounted to genocide. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
By Marta Bellingreri and Alessio Mamo
Published On 23 Jun 201923 Jun 2019
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Sinjar, Iraq – “There is no Sinjar without Yazidis; and there are no Yazidis without Sinjar,” says 25-year-old Shreen, referring to her land of origin, the northern Iraqi province in the Nineveh region.

She survived two years and eight months of sex slavery in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS)-occupied Mosul, but during the battle for the city she managed to escape and later went to Syria to rescue her sister, who had also been taken by ISIL.

“But I don’t want to be considered as an ex-slave or just a survivor. I am now an activist for the Yazidi cause and I will not leave Iraq until I have the corpse of my father.”

Shreen’s father was killed by ISIL in August 2014 in what the United Nations described as a genocide of the Yazidi people.

Today she works with the association Yazidi Organization for Documentation, documenting the exhumation process of the mass graves in Kojo, the village that became a symbol of the Yazidi genocide for the mass killings of adult men, and where the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and activist Nadia Murad was abducted in 2014.

Meanwhile, the fate of more than two thousand women who were kidnapped in the same year is still unknown.

But Yazidi women have not surrendered. On the contrary, some have found the strength to go back and live in Sinjar. Shana and Nada both work and volunteer for local and international associations, such as Yazda, in order to continue their search for the bodies of their loved ones and of the missing persons.

The old city of Sinjar stands at the south of Mount Sinjar. On the mountain, people still live in camps for displaced people.

In the city, many people struggle to survive. But some of the Yazidi women of Sinjar have returned, waiting for justice and determined to work to rebuild their community life.

“Part of the genocide is the displacement and division of families” continues Shreen. “The more we are closer, the more we feel we are alive.”

The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
The Yazidi spiritual leader, Sheikh Kato together with other clerics, celebrate the opening of the first mass grave in Kojo, Sinjar, by releasing white doves from a box. Survivors and families of victims of the genocide gathered on this day. Around 70 mass graves are to be excavated for the exhumation of the bodies in Sinjar. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
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The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad marks the opening of the first mass grave in Kojo, Sinjar. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Three Yazidi women burn incense during the ceremony for the opening of the first mass grave in Kojo, Sinjar on March 15. The Iraqi team of Legal Medicine and Mass Graves Department together with the UN investigative team started to work on Yazidi mass graves on the same day. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Displaced refugee camp on mount Sinjar. Many Yazidis hid in the mountain during the ISIL occupation in 2014. Many are still displaced there. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
In the northern part of Mount Sinjar, near the city of Snooni, a grave of Yazidi male and female fighters of the Yazidi Protection Units killed during ISIL's occupation or in the battle against ISIL. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Nada and Shana in the old city of Sinjar where they used to live before the ISIL occupation. The day ISIL arrived, they left their homes and only returned in 2019. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
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The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Shana and Nada walk in the centre of the old city of Sinjar for the first time since the city was occupied by ISIL and later destroyed during the battle to retake it. Both of them have decided to go back and live in their city to work and support the people of their community who have decided to come back as well after years of displacement. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
View of the valley with the city of Sinjar from Mount Sinjar. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
A poster of Vian Dakhil, member of the Iraqi parliament, in the streets of Sinjar. She is the Winner of the 2014 Anna Politkovskaya Award for her 'courage to become the voice of the Yazidi community and by her determination to campaign for the protection of all Yazidi and other Iraqi women under ISIL, despite the danger she is facing as a Yazidi woman politician opposed to ISIL.' [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
A house in Kojo with an Iraqi flag on the rooftop that was destroyed during the ISIL occupation. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
Aisha, with her two daughters, Jinan and Jihan, in their house in Sinjar. While their mother was enslaved by ISIL, she didn't have any news about the two small girls who were also kidnapped by the ISIL fighters. In 2018 they returned from Syria in two different rescue operations and were reunited with their mother. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
A Yazidi girl playing above an abandoned car in the city of Sinjar. Many of the displaced people who escaped and survived ISIL came back to their city, living often in poor conditions in the heavily damaged city. [Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]
The Return of the Yazidi Queens to Sinjar
A view from Mount Sinjar of the old city of Sinjar, heavily destroyed by ISIS and the battle to retake the city from the occupation.[Alessio Mamo/Al Jazeera]


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