Nadia Murad

Originally named Nadia Murad Basee Taha, but known as Nadia Murad is a Yazidi woman from the village of Kocho in northern Iraq, who was born in 1993. She is an advocate of human rights and stands against the idea of “sexual assault being a weapon of war.”

In 2014, she was a teenager who had dreams about her future when ISIS militants attacked her village, murdered men, his father and brothers, locked women into the high school she was a student of, got raped and was used as a sex worker. She mentions the moments she saw her father and brothers, but then she says that she could not see them ever again. She witnesses all the bloody actions and murders ISIS militants do. 

With the help of an Arabic family, she had the chance to escape from the persecution and went to the refugee camp. She found a way to go to Germany and then she directly started to find ways to inform the world about what was going on in Iraq and ISIS’s actions. In 2016, she was allowed to give a speech in parliament, and then she met with UN authorities and journalists. This process was recorded by Alexandria Bombach and made into a documentary that was titled On Her Shoulders in 2018. Along with her fight against ISIS and her fight to acknowledge the whole world, she is honored with a couple of awards along with the Nobel Peace Prize. She established Nadia’s Initiative to help survivors of sexual assault and help to rebuild the societies that are in crisis. 

ISIS Militants came into the room to pick any women that they would like to sexually assault, and they were appreciated by their friends. And what’s more, there were kids as well. Women of her village were locked into her high school, got beaten, raped and taken to the ‘women's bazaar’ to be sold as sex slaves. She talks about her life and what happened to her and all the women in those camps in her book titled “The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against Islamic State.”

What happened to her happened a couple of years ago, very present time, in front of the world. She was not the only woman who had to go through such horrible issues but is one of the women who had the chance to speak about it. We are the ones who are aware of the situation, know what is going on and help people whose lives get ruined by such organizations. I appreciate Nadia Murad’s bravery and strength in being able to convey what happened to her. 

“It never gets easier to tell your story. Each time you speak it, you relive it.”

P.S. I hope my writing does not seem a way of disrespecting belief systems. I intend to show how people use religion to oppress people. Such organizations that are using religion to perform horrendous actions should not be accepted anywhere in the world.