‘We’re humans not animals’: Dozens of ex-IS brides and their children desperate to go home
Tens of thousands of women – many of them Western – and once married to Islamic State men are still being held in two closed tented camps in the war-torn country nearly five years after the fall of the extremist terror group
Shamima Begum – who ran away to join IS whilst still a teenager at school in east London – is not the only woman to be effectively disowned and abandoned by her home country.
We found dozens of families who once lived in the so-called IS Caliphate urging their governments to rescue them from the barricaded camps manned by armed guards where they’re now being held in north-east Syria.
Ms Begum, who last week lost her latest legal challenge in London’s High Court challenging the decision to strip her of her British citizen status, opted not to talk to us when we arrived at the smaller of the two camps, Al Roj.
The 24-year-old, whose lawyers are arguing she was trafficked to Syria whilst still a minor, took off when she spotted us, running through the maze of tents to avoid our meeting.
But we found many others desperate to talk after what they say are several agonising years of not being heard and nothing done to help them.
‘We’re humans, not animals’
We spoke to British, Australian, Belgian, German, Dutch and Caribbean women who all insist they and their children are being punished for the sins of their partners and fathers.
Many claimed they’d been raped or tricked into going to Syria and in some cases trafficked. All said they couldn’t escape.
Sky News’ Alex Crawford speaks to a resident from the UK
Most of the Western women and their children are in Al Roj where they’ve been without electricity for the past month and where conditions are brutally tough.
“We are human beings, not animals at the end of the day,” one Australian mother-of-three told us on condition of anonymity because she’s in the middle of a legal process to be repatriated.
“An animal wouldn’t be able to withstand these conditions. My son nearly died last year…and my government is aware of this!”
She went on: “Not just the children but most of the women here are being punished for a decision that was made on their behalf…decisions we didn’t make ourselves.
“And our government, even though we’ve reached out continuously is refusing to acknowledge that their citizens are still here trapped in the camps. Australian-born children are still here.”
Multiple countries saw their citizens travel to the region to answer the IS call to create a caliphate around the year 2014.
The terror group went on to take over huge swathes of Syria and Iraq, imposing a harsh and terrifying version of Sharia Law, carrying out executions and crushing any form of dissent.
The IS fighters slaughtered thousands of men from the ethnic Yazidi group because they view them as devil worshippers – and went onto kidnap thousands of Yazidi women turning them into slaves and brutalising them for years.
More than two thousand Yazidi women are still missing and believed to remain in captivity with IS sleeper cells ten years after IS began their massacre.
‘Let us come back’
One British woman from Leeds told us how she was persuaded to go to Syria by her husband who was from Birmingham but has since died in the fighting which followed. Her seven-year-old son Adam was born in Raqqa, the capital of the IS caliphate in Syria.
“It was a bad mistake,’ she said of her decision, ‘But I want to go back home. There’re no schools here,’ she said, ‘No reading or writing – nothing and there’s no doctors. No, don’t do this to Adam, he’s innocent.”
She too asked not to be named after advice from lawyers but appealed to the prime minister to let her return saying she was prepared to stand trial and face any legal consequences.
“Let us come back,” she begged, “My family, my mum, my dad, my brothers all live in England and I want to come back and face trial there…five years I’ve been here. I am tired and I’m sick.”
She walks with a crutch and is paralysed down one side after the vehicle she was travelling in around Baghouz was hit during the fighting to dislodge IS and she was injured.
We go on to hear her story repeated many times with a range of different nationalities telling us they’d been forgotten or dumped by their Governments. Casandra Bodart, a Belgian national with blonde hair and wearing a t-shirt and jeans told us she realised soon after she arrived in Syria that she’d made a terrible mistake.
“For a long time, I tried to escape from there,” she told us.
“But my husband didn’t want me to because it’s like radical you know in the ideology of the Islamic State (to leave your husband) and he told me, if you try to escape I will kill you with my hands.”
‘I tried to run away twice’
Zakija Kacar told us she lived in Germany for 29 years, had a job and gave birth to two children there before being tricked by her husband and taken to Raqqa.
“I tried to run away two times but they caught me and they beat me – then where could I go? I stayed and then he died after four months and I was pregnant so what could I do?”
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She says she was forced to marry another man she didn’t know or love and give birth to two more children, one in Al Roj.
Her five year old youngest daughter has not known any life outside the fences and armed guards of Al Roj camp.
“I hope they can give me a second chance,” she said.
Her ten year old who was born in Stuttgart has forgotten her German and now speaks Arabic.
Safija wants to study to be a doctor but “here is not good,” she told us, “We are trapped like chickens. I want to go out and go to parks.”
‘My kids have done nothing wrong’
The overwhelming bulk of the camp’s residents are children and a string of human rights groups and aid agencies have condemned the conditions in both camps as well as what they call the arbitrary detention of minors for what their parents might have done.
No-one in the camps has stood trial or being questioned in a court over any crimes they might have committed.
UN experts said in a report last year: “The mass detention of children in North-East Syria for what their parents may have done is an egregious violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits all forms of discrimination and punishment of a child based on the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of their parents.”
In one section of the camp called Australia Street because of the domination of Australians living there, there are rainbows and painted maps of Australia.
One mother from Melbourne called Kirsty Rosse-Emile told us she had two small children, aged seven and four who she desperately wants to take back home.
“My kids have done absolutely nothing wrong. My daughter was two years old when we came here and they know nothing and I’m trying to protect them from everything.”
More than 100 politicians from 24 different countries, including the UK, the US and the EU, have written a joint letter condemning China over the “arbitrary detention and unfair trial” of Jimmy Lai, a tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner.
The parliamentarians, led by senior British Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, are “urgently” demanding the immediate release of the 77-year-old British citizen, who has been held in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Hong Kong for almost four years.
The letter – which will be embarrassing for Beijing – was made public on the eve of Mr Lai’s trial resuming and on the day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a G20 summit of economic powers in Brazil.
It also comes as Hong Kong jailed 45 pro-democracy activists.
The group of politicians, who also include representatives from Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Ukraine and France, said Mr Lai’s treatment was “inhumane”.
“He is being tried on trumped-up charges arising from his peaceful promotion of democracy, his journalism and his human rights advocacy,” they wrote in the letter, which has been seen by Sky News.
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Starmer meets Chinese president
“The world is watching as the rule of law, media freedom and human rights in Hong Kong are eroded and undermined.
“We stand together in our defence of these fundamental freedoms and in our demand that Jimmy Lai be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Sir Keir raised the case of Mr Lai during remarks released at the start of his talks with Mr Xi on Monday – the first meeting between a British prime minister and the Chinese leader in six years.
The prime minister could be heard expressing concerns about reports of Mr Lai’s deteriorating health. However, he did not appear to call for his immediate release.
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From October: ‘This is what Hong Kong is’
Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford in the East Midlands, said the meeting had been an opportunity to be unequivocal that the UK expects Mr Lai to be freed.
“Jimmy Lai is being inhumanely persecuted for standing up for basic human values,” she said in a statement, released alongside the letter.
“He represents the flame of freedom millions seek around the world.
“We have a duty to fight for Jimmy Lai as a British citizen, and to take a stand against the Chinese Community Party’s erosion of rule of law in Hong Kong.
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“This letter represents the strength of international feeling and commitment of parliamentarians globally to securing Jimmy Lai’s immediate release and return to the UK with his family.”
Mr Lai was famously the proprietor of the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, which wrote scathing reports about the local authorities and the communist government in mainland China after Britain handed back the territory to Beijing in 1997.
The tabloid was a strong supporter of pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets of Hong Kong to demonstrate against the government in 2019.
But the media mogul was arrested the following year – one of the first victims of a draconian new security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.
His newspaper was closed after his bank accounts were frozen.
Mr Lai has since been convicted of illegal assembly and fraud. He is now on trial for sedition over articles published in Apple Daily.
World
Hong Kong jails 45 pro-democracy activists after accusing them of trying to overthrow the city’s government
Forty-five pro-democracy activists have been jailed in Hong Kong’s largest ever national security trial.
The activists sentenced with jail terms ranging from four years to ten years were accused of conspiracy to commit subversion after holding an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.
They were arrested in 2021.
Hong Kong authorities say the defendants were trying to overthrow the territory’s government.
Democracy activist Benny Tai received the longest sentence of ten years. He became the face of the movement when thousands of protesters took to the city’s streets during the “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations.
However, Hong Kong officials accused him of being behind the plan to organise elections to select candidates.
Tai had pleaded guilty, his lawyers argued he believed his election plan was allowed under the city’s Basic Law.
Another prominent activist Joshua Wong received a sentence of more than four years.
Joshua Wong was sentenced to more than four years Pic: AP
Wong became one of the leading figures in the protests. His activism started as a 15 year old when he spearheaded a huge rally against a government plan to change the school curriculum.
Then in 2019 Hong Kong erupted in protests after the city’s government proposed a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China. It peaked in June 2019 when Amnesty International reported that up to two million people marched on the streets, paralysing parts of Hong Kong’s business district.
The extradition bill was later dropped but it had ignited a movement demanding political change and freedom to elect their own leaders in Hong Kong.
China’s central government called the protests “riots” that could not continue.
Hong Kong introduced a national security law in the aftermath of the protests.
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A woman is taken away by police outside the court Pic: Reuters
The US has called the trial “politically motivated”.
Dozens of family and friends of the accused were waiting for the verdict outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court.
British citizen and media mogul Jimmy Lai is due to testify on Wednesday.
Meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in Brazil, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told China’s President Xi Jinping he’s concerned about the health of Lai.
He faces charges of fraud and the 2019 protests. He has also been charged with sedition and collusion with foreign forces.
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