Udo and Sigi Stolte have visited Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. They experienced beautiful, but also shocking things.
First the beauty: Despite the bad weather with flooding for months, the Esidic refugees in “our” camps were in good spirits. They had reason to do so: We were able to give them fresh fruit and other urgently needed food. In addition, the geese and chickens that we had distributed a year ago for breeding purposes had had offspring.
We also had the opportunity to visit the “capital of the Esid” Ba’adra and distribute food there as well. Great joy and gratitude from the recipients!
But this brings us to the shocking thing.
More and more liberated female slaves of the IS terrorists are arriving at Ba’adra and the nearby Ba’adra Camp. Deeply traumatized by the terrible mistreatment that the henchmen of the “Islamic State” have done to them. A recently liberated teenage girl was lying on the sofa after medical treatment, completely apathetic and did not respond to any speech. Another little girl had witnessed what the terrorists did to her family and lost her hair completely due to this shock. This was two years ago, the hair has still not grown back.
Other girls and young women tell things that I do not want to publish here. The photos of the affected girls and young women are also not published here.
A small team of a local church community took care of the liberated IS-Sex-Slaves. The team trains local women in coping with trauma and procures appropriate materials so that the girls and women can get over their traumas. We will participate in this project. You can contribute with a donation.
We also find traumatized men and boys. A boy of perhaps eight years seemed extremely aggressive and full of hate. He did not want to stay, but to get weapons and fight, to take revenge.
One man was told that he could return to his home country now that it was liberated from the IS. He replied: “Why would I go back? When the ISIS terrorists attacked us, they captured 46 of us men, they killed 45, I am the only survivor.
Such stories leave us speechless.
Time and again I am asked whether we don’t want to give up when “everything is getting worse and worse”. But it is precisely these shocking stories full of unimaginable human suffering that make us want to continue our work. We want to show these people that there is another way than revenge, new violence or resignation. We want to give them new hope. Please help us with this.