House vote unanimous in reaching out to Yazidis
Group targeted by ISIL militants in northern Iraq
OTTAWA • With a freed Yazidi sex slave watching from the gallery, the House of Commons voted unanimously Tuesday to acknowledge a genocide against her people and to offer a haven in Canada for vulnerable women and girls.
Nadia Murad, described by the Conservatives as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has been lobbying MPs this week on behalf of her fellow Yazidis.
She received an ovation from the House before MPs voted 313-0 to adopt a Conservative motion calling on the Liberal government to begin helping her fellow Yazidis within the next 120 days.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured that help was in the offing.
“I am pleased to see Nadia again today and reassure her that in the coming months we are committed to bring in ... vulnerable Yazidi refugees,” he said during question period.
The Yazidis, a Kurdishspeaking religious minority who dwelled mainly in northern Iraq, have been targeted by ISIL militants over the past two years. Thousands of Yazidi men were killed, while thousands of women and girls were carried off, bought and sold in slave markets.
Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, who helped guide the motion through the House, said she wants to see a concrete action plan to help the Yazidis, saying that will count more than words.
Immigration Minister John McCallum said the government intends to act.
“We on this side of the House are every bit as enthusiastic and committed to welcoming Yazidis to this country,” he said.
“We are looking into various ways in which this can be done and we will do the job.”
McCallum called the unanimous vote a good thing. “I am really pleased that an issue of this importance should go above politics.”
Ambrose has said a minimum of 1,000 Yazidi women and girls should be brought to Canada, but McCallum didn’t offer a target.
“We do not have any numbers today.”
During a news conference earlier Tuesday, Murad said she was grateful to Canada, “the second country after Germany that did not accept the injustice against the women and girls and decided to step up and help them,” she said, speaking through an interpreter.
“These women and girls have been under extreme suffering for the past two
WE ARE COMMITTED TO BRING IN ... VULNERABLE YAZIDI REFUGEES.
years, where they were sold, where they were raped, where their children were taken away from them.”
Women and girls have no value to the Islamic State’s militants, she said.
“I would like to thank Canada on behalf of the victims who will come here and who will start a new life,” she said. “They will start a new life where they will have rights, where they will have safety, where they will have a new life that is different than the life they had at the hands of ISIL.”
She also said it was impossible to move the entire Yazidi people to other countries. She said she hoped Canada would join other countries in defending a safe zone for her people.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, who sponsored the Yazidi motion, said the women and girls at the heart of it have suffered unspeakably.
“As one victim said, ‘If you can’t save us, please bomb us, as we can’t bear to live.’ ”