Women suspected of ISIS links being abused in Iraq camps
Iraqi women suspected of having links to ISIS are being subjected to sexual violence in eight northern Iraqi refugee camps, a new Amnesty International report says.
Based on 92 interviews with women from camps in the districts of Salaheddin and Nineveh, the rights group detailed accounts of rape and sexual assault against women.
“Women were being coerced and pressured into sexual relationships in exchange for desperately needed cash, humanitarian aid and protection from other men,” the report said.
It said many of the families interviewed had male relatives who had been killed or arrested as they fled the northern Iraq city of Mosul in the 10-month coalition assault on ISIS.
Local Iraqi and tribal officials were also denying the women and their children access to humanitarian aid because of their suspected links to militants.
Those who arrived back to their homes have been evicted, threatened and abused and their homes looted, the report said. Others have had their power cut off, or their homes destroyed.
“Women and children with perceived ties to ISIS are being punished for crimes they did not commit,” Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s Middle East research director, wrote in the report. “This humiliating collective punishment risks laying the foundation for future violence.”
Iraqi forces, backed by the air power and advisers of the USled coalition, finally removed ISIS from Mosul in July last year. The extremists held the city for three years after its leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, declared it part of a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria.
Since the fall of Mosul, witnesses and humanitarian organisations have documented widespread abuse by the Iraqi forces.
In one case, a US-trained Iraqi military unit, the 16th Division, was accused of the summary executions of several dozen men in Mosul’s Old City as the battle for Mosul neared its end.
In November last year, the UN said that at least 2,521 civilians had been killed in the battle for Mosul. ISIS executed at least 741 people, the report said, and 74 mass graves where they dumped their victims were discovered in or around the city.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has pledged to bring perpetrators to justice where there is evidence of offences.
The rights group called on his administration in Baghdad to end the mistreatment of those who are not yet proven to have ISIS links.
“To put an end to the poisonous cycle of marginalisation and communal violence that has plagued Iraq for decades, the Iraqi government and international community must commit to upholding the rights of all Iraqis without discrimination,” Ms Maalouf wrote.
“Without this, there can be no national reconciliation or lasting peace.”