Slaves of the Islamic State Synopsis
Yazidi fighters and women survivors of the ISIS siege of Mount Sinjar speak about their horrific experiences from the relative safety of the Duhok and Zaxo refugee camps.
Directed by Pari Ibrahim in conjunction with the Free Yezidi Foundation and Brandpunt.
Slaves of the Islamic State was an official selection of the 2016 WVN Online Film Festival.
About the Filmmaker
Pari Ibrahim, a Yezidi young woman from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, lives in the Netherlands. When she was just 25 years-old, she saw what ISIS had done to her people. She was a law student working at the library, but she felt her whole world fell apart. She quit her job and education so that she could focus on helping her people. ISIS took 19 girls in her extended family. All of them had been raped by different men, sold and traded. Two of these girls returned devoid of expression. Seeing their suffering wasn’t enough. Pari founded the Free Yezidi Foundation and proved to herself that one person can make a change. Pari built the organization from the ground up.
The organization even raised $120,000 from Gucci’s Chime for Change, from which they created four projects: a children’s center, a women’s center in the camp, hiring post-trauma experts in Kurdistan to train local practitioners, and advocacy. Pari and the Free Yezidi Foundation raise awareness of the genocide and the women and girls who are still in ISIS captivity. The Free Yezidi Foundation has been invited by the House of Lords and the Security Council of the United Nations.
Many speeches by The Free Yezidi Foundation can be found on their website. Pari remains the Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation to this day. What is most important to Pari is that the story of these women and girls are shared, so the women who are still trapped can be rescued. Governments are already forgetting the plight of the Yezidi women and girls.
More from the Filmmaker
On 3 August 2014, ISIS entered a Yezidi province called Sinjar in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where more than 500,000 Yezidis lived. When ISIS came, the Kurdish Peshmerga withdrew, leaving civilians unarmed. ISIS killed many men. Nineteen mass graves have been found (2015). ISIS captured 3,000 women and girls, as young as 9, to sell them as sex slaves in Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq. Women who were too old to be sold as sex slaves were immediately killed. To this day, the Yezidi people have been ripped apart from each other and their homeland.
About the Collaborator
The Free Yezidi Foundation is designed to assist Yezidis in need. The Foundation was established shortly after terrorists attempted to eradicate the Yezidi people in August 2014. The Free Yezidi Foundation seeks to implement projects to protect and support the most vulnerable members of the Yezidi community. The Foundation is a politically independent, non-profit organization, an officially registered charity in the Netherlands and is designed to operate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
