Search results
Kocho (Kurdish: کۆچۆ, romanized: Koço; Arabic: كوجو) is a village in Sinjar District, south of the Sinjar Mountains in the Nineveh Governorate of Iraq. It is considered one of the disputed territories of Northern Iraq and is populated by Yazidis.
- Overview
- Capture and escape
- Activism
Nadia Murad (born 1993, Kawjū (Kocho), Iraq) Yazīdī human rights activist who was kidnapped by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also called ISIS) in August 2014 and sold into sex slavery. She escaped three months later, and shortly thereafter she began speaking out about human trafficking and sexual violence, especially as these issu...
In August 2014 ISIL undertook a campaign to capture Yazīdī villages for the purpose of human trafficking. The Yazīdī community, largely located around the Sinjār Mountains in Iraq, had long suffered persecution and discrimination. Unlike many other religious minorities, such as Jews and Christians whose religious proximity to Islam allowed them certain protections through the dhimmah system, the Yazīdīs had often been singled out for persecution on the basis of their teachings. Drawing on this background, the propaganda machine of ISIL was able to target the Yazīdīs as a religiously sanctioned source for sex slavery in an effort to lure young men to join the militant group.
On August 15 Murad’s village of Kawjū (Kocho) was captured by ISIL. The Yazīdīs were rounded up, and the men and women were separated. The men, including six of Murad’s brothers, were massacred. Some older women, including Murad’s mother, were also killed. The rest of the women, including Murad, were taken to Mosul, Iraq, the largest city held by ISIL at the time, to be marketed as sex slaves. More than 5,200 Yazīdī women in total were trafficked by ISIL in 2014, while about 5,000 men were killed.
In 2015 Murad left for Germany as part of a refugee program for survivors of ISIL. In December of that year she was asked to speak before the UN Security Council on human trafficking, an appearance that prompted a number of requests for interviews. Her testimonies not only drew attention to the ongoing suffering of the Yazīdī community and to the h...
In 2014, as part of the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq and much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
Jun 1, 2017 · KOCHO, Iraq (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A prominent Yazidi activist held as a sex slave by Islamic State militants returned to her home in Iraq on Thursday for the first time since she was...
Feb 7, 2021 · The Yazidi community of northern Iraq has brought home 104 of its members who were killed by the Islamic State group during its reign of terror in 2014. Their remains had been identified and...
The Yazidi community of northern Iraq has brought home 104 of its members who were killed by the Islamic State group during its reign of terror in 2014. Their remains had been identified and...
Mar 15, 2019 · kocho, iraq — Asia was 12 when Islamic State militants separated her from her mother and held her for two days. They told her and other young Yazidi girls to get onto a bus.
