Two Yazidi women win European Parliament’s Sakharov rights prize

Two Yazidi women activists who escaped the Islamic State ( IS) group in Iraq won the European Parliament’s human rights prize on Thursday.

Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, 2016 laureates of the prize, have become figureheads for the effort to protect the Yazidi community after having survived a nightmare in captivity at the hands of jihadists.

Named after dissident Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov, who died in 1989, the prize is awarded every year to honor individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression, often falling foul of their governments as a result.

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was previously awarded on two occasions to Chinese activists. Beijing rebutted both these awards, criticizing the parliament for its political agenda.

After Hu Jia, accused of “inciting subversion” to his country, was awarded for his activism in 2008, the Chinese foreign ministrysaidthenominatingcommitteeof the parliament was attempting to interfere in China’s internal affairs and infringe on its judicial sovereignty under the guise of preservinghumanrights, ChinaNewsService reported.

Murad, a slight, soft- spoken young woman, was taken by IS from her home village of Kocho near Iraq’s northern town of Sinjar in August 2014 and brought to the city of Mosul.

As a captive of the reviled extremist group, Murad, 23, said she was tortured and raped.

Bashar, who was just 16 when she was taken and is also from Kocho, witnessed family and friends being slaughtered by IS jihadists before being enslaved and sold.

After 20 months in captivity, she escaped but then fell into the hands of an Iraqi hospital director who also abused and raped her and several other victims.

The Parliament awarded the 2015 prize to Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi, jailed for “insulting” Islam.

In 2013, three political prisoners from Belarus and American spy- turned whistleblower Edward Snowden were among the nominees.

The prize, worth 50,000 euros ($ 55,000), will be presented at a ceremony on December 14 in Strasbourg.

Among the other nominees was Can Dundar, the former editor- in- chief of Cumhuriyet, Turkey’s top opposition daily, who was sentenced in May to five years and 10 months in prison for allegedly revealing state secrets in a story that infuriatedTurkey’sauthoritarianPresident Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Past winners include Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, South African rights icon Nelson Mandela and Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi.