Iraqi Yazidis Nadia Murad Basee, left, and Lamiya Aji Bashar, right, survived sexual enslavement by the Islamic State members. They won the EU’s Sakharov Prize for human rights. (Photo: AP)
The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its Sakharov Prize to Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, two Iraqi Yazidi women who were held as sex slaves by Islamic State militants and have campaigned for human rights since escaping.
Ms Murad and MS Bashar were among thousands of women and girls abducted, tortured and sexually abused by ISIS fighters after the militants rounded up Yazidis in the village of Kocho, near Sinjar in northwest Iraq, in the year 2014.
Ms Murad, now aged 23, was held by ISIS in Mosul but escaped her captors in November 2014, reached a refugee camp and eventually made her way to Germany. She has since become active as an advocate for the Yazidis, and women’s rights in general, as well as campaigning against human trafficking.
She has briefed the UN security council on the problem of human trafficking and last month launched Nadia’s Initiative to help genocide victims.
Ms Bashar, 18, was captured in the same raid as Murad and also kept as a sex slave. She escaped in March but was badly disfigured and blinded in one eye when a landmine went off as she fled. She now lives in Germany.
