From mining to palm oil, British capital is profiting from West Papuaâs dispossession.
West Papua faces a hidden political and humanitarian crisis. Conflict over the right to self-determination and sovereignty over accelerating industrial development has led to repression, extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances. An extensive network of state and corporate security forces targets activists, clergy, students, local politicians and customary leaders through intensive military intelligence operations. The United Nations estimates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 internally displaced people in West Papua since violence escalated in 2018 â up to 2 per cent of the population of 5.6 million.
This mass displacement is largely driven by foreign investors and their palm oil plantations, often located on traditional land that local people fiercely defend. These plantations are often heavily militarised and frequently the site of human rights violations.
Britainâs military and financial institutions are entangled in the exploitation and repression of West Papua. The British government supports the Indonesian military through arms exports and jungle warfare training, while British companies and investors profit from mining, gas extraction and plantation projects that local people staunchly oppose.
Full article: https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/04/02/how-british-companies-profit-from-west-papuan-repression/
The nation of modern Turkey was founded built in the 1920s out of the chaos that ensued during the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire, wars and genocidal campaigns against Greeks, Armenians and other ânon-Turkishâ people who lived in Anatolia and Asia Minor for generations.
Millions of Greeks, Armenians and Jews were forced to flee, while others were taken to other regions and sold into sex gangs or labor camps.
As the dust settled, these people eventually integrated into Turkish society. Names were changed and mass conversions to Islam took place. The human chaos out of which Turkish society was created, was a closely-guarded secret within Turkish government circles.
For decades, the confidentiality of genealogy data was kept strictly confidential by the Turkish government.
Any information that revealed ancestry details of Turkish citizens was always a sensitive matter, considered by the government to be a national security issue.
There were two main reasons for all this secrecy.
Revealing ancestry dataâ some of which stemmed back to Ottoman timesâ would open up a can or worms to Turkeyâs bloody history of its founding in the early 1900s, specifically about how tens of thousands of of Armenians, Syriacs, Greeks and Jews had been forced to convert to Islam and became âintegratedâ into society.
Furthermore, revealing such information would also open up public conversations and debates about the idea of âTurkishnessâ or a single ethnic identity of the people that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk tried grouping together into a modern state when he founded the nation.
For a long time, the official policy was that Turkish people formed a cohesive ethnic identity.
But less than two weeks ago, on Feb. 8, population registers were officially opened to the public via an online genealogy database and the public went wild, crashing the website after millions flocked to learn where their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came from.
The system allows users with a citizen number to inquire about the names, birthplace, dates of birth and death of their grandparents and great-grandparents, leading all the way back into the 19th century when the Ottomans kept meticulous records.
Some people who had always boasted of their âpureâ Turkish ancestry were shocked to learn they actually had other ethnic and religious rootsâ a Greek grandmother or a grandfather who was Armenian.
Turkish social media soon began trending with the topic as people shared their ancestry results online. Hardcore nationalists began targeting those who had mixed ancestry and called them âcrypto-Armeniansâ or âinfidel Greeks.â
Genealogy has always been a popular topic of conversation in Turkish society, but also a tool of social and political division.
âI hope my family isnât Greek or Kurdish,â one Twitter tweeted.
Many families often acknowledged privately that their lineage was Armenian or Greek or that a long-dead relative was a convert to Islam, but those conversations were kept secret.
The mindset of society was starkly clear when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once complained, âWe are accused of being Jews, Armenians or Greeks.â
Being a descendant of a Greek, Armenian or other non-Turkish lineage in Turkey carried a stigma that could not be erased. The government has always had this information about its citizens and even created a secret âbrandingâ or ârace codeâ of citizens based on genealogy data they possessed.
Those with Greek lineage were branded in public records with a â1â next to their name, while Armenians were marked with a â2â and Jews with a â3.â This classification was secretly used when a young man became of military age or when someone applied for a job with the government.
If their lineage was known to be Greek or Armenianâ even unbeknownst to the actual individual, they were denied jobs or favored positions within the military or civil service.
Ethnic Armenian writer Hayko Bagdat in an interview told Al-Monitor, âDuring the 1915 genocide, along with mass conversions, there were also thousands of children in exile. Those who could reach foreign missionaries were spirited abroad. Some were grabbed by roaming gangs during their escape and made into sex slaves and laborers. The society is not yet ready to deal with this reality.â Â Â
Turkish people (as well as certain Westerners) calling Greeks butthurt for not âgetting overâ the loss of Constantinopleâ go fuck yourselves. Seriously.
I have no patience for genocide apologists that treat the oppression of Greeks (as well as other minorities) by the Ottomans/Turks as if it's some dick measuring competition over who gets Constantinople and not systemic oppression, ethnic cleansing and displacement of indigenous populations.
The amount of insensitivity it takes to treat this issue as some inconsequential event that happened hundreds of years ago and we should drop already, when in reality it's 4+ centuries of colonisation that resulted in a genocide just three/four generations back, a pogrom in the 1950s as well as the invasion of Cyprus that's still fucking occupied to this day. In the span of the 20th century the once vibrant Greek community of Anatolia and Pontus was fucking wiped out. To this day Turks not only deny the triple genocide they committed and upon which their country is built, but make jokes about Greeks âbetter knowing how to swimâ in reference to refugees from Smyrna in 1922 throwing themselves at sea in order not to get raped and murdered by the Turks.
Don't you dare tell me this is something we should âget over alreadyâ.
and the reason Greeks in the middle east, especially in Turkey and Egypt, handled finances and banks, is because throughout the Ottoman empire outside the mainland (where peasant collectives were beholden to regional taxation) they werenât allowed to own land and many were pushed into trading and mercantile exchange. same thing in Smyrna and Constantinople as in Alexandria. same with Armenians
Pamuk writes about how there was a saying that went âone Greek is as bad as three Jews and one Armenian as bad as three Greeks
let me post a few examples since this was sitting in my drafts:
Cringing (yet insolent), the Armenian-as-victim was of course the flip side of the second strand: the Armenian-as-shyster, who fleeced the Turkish peasant, amassing the entire Ottoman economy into his own sticky hands.
Barth himself âprovedâ the stereotype by trotting out a âproverbâ beloved of all self-proclaimed experts on the Orient from London to Petersburg: âOne Greek is able to cheat two Jews, but one Armenian can cheat two Greeks.â Elements of this discourse had already appeared in the works of orientalists such as Alfred KoĚrte, the archaeologist; Karl Krummbacher, founder of Byzantine studies in Germany; [âŚ]
âEven Jews have their good points, but Armenians have noneâ: Sir Mark Sykes, quoted in G. S. Graber, Caravans to Oblivion: The Armenian Genocide, 1915
In his Zukunft piece, Barth omitted the coupletâs reference to âJews,â probably in deference to the sensitivities of (the now baptized) Harden. But purged of its slur against Jews, Barthâs âproverbâsâ charge against the Armenians was then multiplied tenfold: âWhen it comes to sharp practices, one Armenian is a match for twenty Greeks.â
Variations were endless. Karl Mayâs âDer Kys-Kaptschijiâ (1896â97) puts one Jew over ten Christians, one Yankee over fifty Jews, but one Armenian over a hundred Yankees.
âRussians are never tired of repeating that it takes two Greeks to swindle a Jew, two Jews to cheat the devil, but it takes two devils to cheat an Armenian.âÂ
âWhatever the version, the Armenian always comes out worst.â
In describing an evening spent with German expats in Constantinople, Naumann quoted at length one who, to unanimous accord, justified the massacres as the âself-defenseâ of honest, upright Turks, a people exploited by the grasping Armenian, who would steal from his own brother, sell his wife and prepubescent daughter, and morally befoul the whole city. In the Empire of the Silver Lion (1898) quoted Naumann to add force to the novelistâs own axiom that the âhawk-nosed Armenianâ was someone who (âspeaking generally and on averageâ) could be counted on to have a hand in the game âwhenever and wherever in the Orient any kind of vile thingâ went down. Since Mayâs previous writings had long made his distaste for Armenians clear, we may wonder who was recycling whom.â We recognize these stereotypes, of course, but associate them with other victims
And we have become so familiar with Edward Saidâs famous analogy between antisemitism and its âsecret sharer,â Orientalism (described by him as antisemitismâs âIslamic branchâ), that we have all but forgotten that these tropes were once used against a Christian people on behalf of a Muslim one.
from âDown in Turkey, far awayâ: Human Rights, the Armenian
Massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany*Â
The Pontic (sometimes Pontian) Greek genocide is the term applied to the massacres and deportations perpetrated against ethnic Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire at the hands of the Young Turk government between 1914 and 1923. The name of this people derives from the Greek word pontus, meaning âsea coast,â and refers to the Greek population that had lived on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, that is, in [what is now] northern Turkey, for three millennia. In a campaign reminiscent of the Armenian genocide that was being perpetrated at roughly the same time, the Pontic Greeks suffered innumerable cruelties at the hands of the Turks. An estimated three hundred fifty-three thousand Pontic Greeks died, many on forced marches through Anatolia and the Syrian Desert just like the Armenians. Those who survived were exiled from Turkey. The largest surviving Greek community, centered in the city of Smyrna ([now] Izmir), was literally pushed into the sea in 1922, with the city razed and thousands killed by the advancing Turkish Nationalist army. The destruction of the Pontic Greeks, and the forcible deportation that followed, had but a single planned outcome: the removal of all Greeks from Turkey. It was a successful campaign in that it destroyed this ancient Greek community forever, creating a diaspora that is never likely to be reestablished in its ancestral homeland. In another parallel with the Armenian situation, successive Turkish governments have denied that the Pontic genocide ever occurred; the most frequent official explanations given are that the Greeks died as casualties of war, by famine brought about by the Russian invasion of northern Turkey, or as a result of civil disturbances.Â
Dictionary of Genocide [Volume Two], by Samuel Totten, Paul Bartrop, and Eric Markusen.Â
19th May - remembrance of the Pontic Greek Genocide
âThe persecutions of the Greeks are assuming unexpected proportions. Only a fortnight ago they reassured and told that the measures taken against the Greek villages in Marmora were temporary and not comparable with those against the Armenians. Now it looks as if there is equality in suffering and that the intention existed to uproot and destroy both peaceful communities.â - Lewis Einstein
The systematic expulsion and extermination of the Armenian population (Armenian Genocide) also became the fate of the Greeks from 1914-23 by the Ottoman Empire and then Turkish National Movement. It followed the same process of forcing people from their homes, death marches, starvation and massacres. The infamous catastrophe of Smyrna (September 1922) subsequently destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters in the city and resulted in the estimated at least 10-100,000 deaths.Â
âWe must at last do with the Greeks as we did with the ArmeniansâŚâ - Rafet Bey, 1916
Overall, figures put it to at the very least 353,000 victims (possibly up to by 750,000). Just like with the Armenian Genocide, recognition for the Pontic Greek Genocide is not fully recognised or accepted.Â
For more information: Greek Genocide resource centre (warning for explicit images)
untitled part 1: everything and nothing (1999) souha bechara after her release from captivity in israeli prison el-khiam in south lebanon.
An intimate dialogue that weaves back and forth between representations of a figure (of resistance) and subject with, Soha Bechara ex-Lebanese National Resistance fighter in her Paris dorm room taped (during the last year of the Israeli occupation) one year after her release from captivity in El-Khiam torture and interrogation centre (S. Lebanon) where she had been detained for 10 years, 6 years in isolation. Revising notions of resistance, survival and will, recounting to death, separation and closeness; the overexposed image and body of a surviving martyr speaking quietly and directly into the camera juxtaposed against her self and image, not speaking of the torture but of the distance between the subject and loss, of what is left behind and what remains.
Fun fact about this video: it was included in Canada's first ever exhibition of contemporary art by Arab-Canadian artists. The exhibition, however, was set to open just days before 9/11 happened, and so it was postponed -- to a great deal of public controversy -- because the simple fact of the artists being of Arab descent was somehow seen to make the whole thing too much of a hot button issue. This video in particular by Jayce Salloum was seen as being especially controversial.
Thankfully, the Canadian government officially spoke out against the museum's postponement as being a racist conflation of all Arabs with terrorists, and so the show went back on. But it never got the widespread acclaim it deserved as a historic moment in Canadian art, since a lot of the other museums it was supposed to travel to dropped it, and its pioneering curator, Aida Kaouk, was pushed out of her position at the museum :(
The artists' open letter about the exhition's censorship here: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/43636/the-postponement-of-exhibition-on-arab-canadian-art
Gavrâinis cairn (around 3.500 B.C.), Ăle de Gavrinis, Breizh 2017.
The burial chamber is reached from the outside by a 14m long corridor. Of the 29 orthostat slabs that form the sides of the passage, 23 are decorated with carved symbols and patterns.
âIt is for its art that Gavrinis is famous. No fewer than twenty-three of itâs twenty-nine upright stones have been carved, not in single or isolated motifs but in a profuse series of compositions so that stone flows into stone or is mirrored by another in patterns engraved in low relief. The art is balanced in panels horizontally and vertically in symbols of which the main elements are concentric arcs and axes. These latter implements have splayed cutting edges like the big, prestige axes from the Carnac Mounds.â - A. Burl
The last stone in my photos has 3 horizontal hand sized holes about 10 cm deep similar to kerbstone 52 at Newgrange (which was built supposedly around 300 years later).
The minister says the situation in Cuba is "extremely tense", as a US-led blockade of oil to the country causes widespread power cuts.
Fucking sickening, heartbreaking, disgusting. Hospitals, ambulances, water pumps, so much infrastructure shut down and so many lives hurt and lost because of it, all of this at the whim of the world's most brutal empire because they can't stand to have their will resisted so close to their shores by a society that has chosen time and time again to stand proud for the dream of a better world, a world without this blood-soaked hegemony.
Today, May 16th, we commemorate the Roma resistance against the Nazis in what is now remembered as the International Roma Resistance Day.
Via Roma Antidiscrimination Network & Roma Center e.V. : "From the very beginning of World War II, Roma and Sinti fought against the deprivation of their rights and their racial classification. They protested against discriminatory regulations and attempted to secure the release of deported family members through petitions or personal intervention. They worked closely with resistance groups in the occupied territories. They played an important role in the national liberation movements, particularly in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. A large number of Roma and Sinti lost their lives in the armed struggle against National Socialism. Roma and Sinti also engaged in various forms of resistance in the concentration camps. A high point was the uprising in Section BIIe of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the "Z-Camp.
On May 16, 1944, approximately 6,000 peopleâmen, women, the elderly, and childrenâbarricaded themselves in the barracks of the "Z-Familienlager." They had been informed by the resistance network within the camp that the camp was to be "liquidated" at night. Therefore, they decided to fight back. They confronted the SS with tools, stones, and, above all, with courage and determination when they came to take them to the gas chambers.
Structural and legal discrimination against Roma is not a thing of the past. Even today, Roma around the world are still fighting for equal rights. More and more ethno-nationalists are using Roma as scapegoats for economic decline and all kinds of misfortune. Inspired by these people's resistance, we continue to fight. Today and tomorrow."
In post-Assad Syria, the mass abduction and sexual enslavement of Alawite women under Sharaaâs rule mirrors the darkest atrocities of ISIS â
i know it's another long article but please read thoroughly. discussion of how the ongoing abductions and enslavement of alawite girls & women mirror the enslavement of ezidi girls and women. also keep in mind there are about 3,000 ezidis still missing/remain in captivity to this day.
"In post-Assad Syria, the mass abduction and sexual enslavement of Alawite women under Sharaaâs rule mirrors the darkest atrocities of ISIS â yet is met with global silence.
Since December, when the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, Syria has witnessed a chilling wave of mysterious kidnappings of young women.
Evidence continues to emerge that these women, primarily from the Alawite religious sect, have been abducted and taken to live as sex slaves in Idlib governorate, the traditional HTS stronghold, by armed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government.
Shockingly, the mass kidnapping and enslavement of Alawite women now being carried out by HTS-affiliated factions mirrors the enslavement of the thousands of Yezidi women by ISIS during the 2014 genocide in Sinjar, Iraq.
The activist who spoke outÂ
In a now deleted Facebook post, Hiba Ezzedeen, a Syrian activist from Idlib, described her encounter with a woman she believes was captured and taken to the governorate as a sex slave during the wave of massacres carried out by government-affiliated factions and security forces against Alawites in the country's coastal areas on 7 March.
âDuring my last visit to Idlib, I was at a place with my brother when I saw a man I knew with a woman I had never met before,â Hiba explained.Â
âThis man had been married multiple times before and is believed to currently have three wives. What caught my attention was the womanâs appearance â specifically, it was clear she didnât know how to wear a hijab properly, and her scarf was draped haphazardly.â
After inquiring further, Ezzedeen learned that the woman was from the coastal areas where the 7 March massacres, in which over 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed, took place.
âThis man had brought her to the village and married her, with no further details available. No one knew what had happened to her or how she got there, and naturally, the young woman was too afraid to speak,â Ezzedeen added.
Because the situation was so strange and alarming to her, she began asking everyone she knew, ârebels, factions, human rights activists,â about the abduction of Alawite women from the coast.Â
âUnfortunately, many confirmed that this had indeed happened, and not just by one faction. Based on what friends said, accusations point to factions of the National Army and some foreign fighters, with varying motives,â she reported.Â
Syria's new HTS-led security forces have incorporated armed extremist groups, including Uyghurs from the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and Syrian Turkmen from factions of the Turkish-intelligence-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), into their ranks since coming to power in Damascus.Â
Various SNA commanders and foreign extremists have been appointed to top positions in the Syrian Ministry of Defense.
While the HTS-dominated General Security units participated in the 7 March massacres in many areas, former SNA and foreign fighter factions are believed to have led the campaign. Militants went door to door in Alawite villages and neighborhoods, executing all military-aged men they could find, looting homes, and at times killing women, children, and the elderly.Â
Ezzedeen concluded her post by stating, âThis is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. The government must immediately reveal the fate of these women and release them.â
Rather than investigate the issue and seek to rescue the captive women, the HTS-appointed governor of Idlib issued an order for Ezzedeen's arrest, claiming she had âinsulted the hijab.â
Ezzedeen's courageous revelation shed light on the fate of many young women from minority communities who had mysteriously disappeared in recent months, after self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and HTS toppled Assad and took power in Damascus.Â
A pattern of abductionsÂ
In one of the earliest cases, a young Druze woman from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Karolis Nahla, disappeared on the morning of 2 February 2024, while on her way to university in the Mezzeh area. The case was strange because no ransom was demanded, and nothing was heard of her again.
Over time, information began to trickle out that young women like Karolis were being kidnapped and taken to Idlib as slaves, as Hiba Ezzedeen finally confirmed.Â
On 21 March, Bushra Yassin Mufarraj, an Alawite mother of two, went missing from the bus station in Jableh. Her husband later posted a video appeal stating she had been abducted and taken to Idlib.
âMy wife was taken captive in Idlib. Is there anything more cruel that could happen to a man in the world? That his wife and the mother of his children be in such circumstances,â he stated in a video appeal for help published on social media 10 days later.
Bushra's disappearance was followed by a wave of kidnappings in the following days and weeks. The Kurdish Jinha Agency reported on 25 March, citing local reports, that more than 100 people were kidnapped by armed groups in Syriaâs coastal regions over the previous 48 hours, including many women.
On 5 April, 21-year-old Katia Jihad Qarqat went missing. The last contact with her was at 9:20 am near a shop at the Bahra circle in Jdeidat Artouz in the Damascus countryside. Her family pleaded that anyone who had seen or had any information about her should contact them.
On 8 April, 17-year-old Sima Suleiman Hasno went missing at 11:00 am after leaving her school in the village of Qardaha in the Latakia countryside. Sima was released four days later in Damascus, where she was handed over to her aunt by members of the HTS-led Syrian government.Â
Surveillance footage from shops near the abduction site circulated widely on social media, sparking widespread outrage.
On 11 April, at 4:00 pm, contact was lost with 22-year-old Raneem Ghazi Zarifa in the Hama countryside, in the city of Masyaf.Â
âWe are extremely worried about her. We ask that anyone with information about her, no matter how small, please contact us immediately,â her family said in a social media post.Â
On 14 April, Batoul Arif Hassan, a young married woman with a three-year-old child from Safita, disappeared after visiting family in the village of Bahouzi. Contact was lost with her around 4:00 pm as she was traveling in a public minibus on the HomsâSafita Road. Her family asked in a social media post for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact her brother by phone.Â
On the morning of 16 April, Aya Talal Qassem, 23, was kidnapped after leaving her home in the coastal city of Tartous. Three days later, Aya's kidnapper freed her and sent her to Tartous on the Homs highway, only for the HTS-led General Prosecution Service to detain her.Â
Aya's mother posted a video to social media explaining that her family was not allowed to be with her in detention and that her father was arrested when he insisted on seeing her. The mother said that the General Prosecution Service tried to force Aya to give testimony, saying that she was not kidnapped but had instead run away with a lover. The mother added that she was pressured to tell such a story despite the presence of bleeding cuts and wounds on her body.
A video was posted online of the moment of her emotional return home to eagerly awaiting family and relatives.
On 21 April, 26-year-old Nour Kamal Khodr was abducted with her two daughters, 5-year-old Naya Maher Qaidban and 3-year-old Masa Maher Qaidban.Â
Nour and her daughters left their home in the village of Al-Mashrafa in rural Homs at noon, heading toward a neighborâs house. Witnesses saw a masked group affiliated with the HTS-led General Security abduct them, placing them in a vehicle marked with the groupâs emblem before fleeing.Â
Echoes of SinjarÂ
By 17 April, Iraqi media outlet Al-Daraj reported on 10 confirmed kidnappings of Alawite women from the coastal regions. According to one survivor, pseudonym Rahab, she was abducted in broad daylight and held in a locked room with another woman.
Rahab was released after the kidnappers allegedly feared a raid by General Security. She said she was kidnapped in broad daylight and held in a room with another woman, stating:Â
âThey tortured and beat us. We weren't allowed to speak to each other, but I heard the kidnappers' accents. One had a foreign accent and the other a local Idlib accent. I knew this because they were cursing us because we were Alawites.â
The other woman, held with her, pseudonym Basma, remains in captivity. She was forced to call her family to tell them she was âfineâ and to assure them that âthey should not publish anythingâ about her abduction.
Al-Daraj also documented the case of an 18-year-old girl who was also kidnapped in broad daylight, from the countryside of a coastal city in Syria.Â
Her family later received a text message warning them to remain silent about her abduction or else she would be sent back dead. The girl later sent the family a voice recording from a phone number registered in the Ivory Coast, saying she was fine and unsure where she had been taken.
The Iraqi media outlet compared these cases to the ISIS genocide of Yezidis in Sinjar. Over 6,400 Yezidis were enslaved by ISIS in 2014. Thousands were trafficked into Syria and Turkiye, sold as domestic or sex slaves, or trained for battle. Many remain missing.
HTS: The ideological continuity of ISIS
That Alawite women are now appearing in Idlib is unsurprising given HTSâs ideological lineage. HTS, which seized Idlib in 2015 with CIA-supplied TOW missiles, shares the same genocidal worldview as ISIS. It was founded by ISIS and led by Sharaa â then known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who was dispatched to Syria in 2011 by the late âcaliphâ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish the Nusra Front, forerunner to HTS.Â
In 2014, Syria analyst Sam Heller therefore described Nusraâs clerics as promoting âtoxic â even genocidal â sectarianism," towards Alawites, based on the teachings of the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah.
Though HTS and ISIS clashed in 2014, their ties endured. When Baghdadi was killed in 2019, he was hiding in Barisha, just outside HTS-held Sarmada. At the time, numerous enslaved Yezidis were also in Idlib.
The Guardian confirmed this, quoting Abdullah Shrem, a Yezidi rescuer, and Alexander Hug of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), who said missing persons were often held âin areas beyond government control.â
In 2019, Ali Hussein, a Yezidi from Dohuk, told NPR journalist Jane Arraf of his attempt to purchase the freedom of an 11-year-old Yezidi girl who had been abducted by ISIS but was âsold to an emir of an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria â Jabhat al-Nusra [Nusra Front] â [and] that she's no longer a virgin.â
âI told you $45,000 from the beginning. I know what they pay in Raqqa. I told you, in Turkiye, they would pay $60,000 or $70,000 and take out the girl's organs. But I don't want to do that,â the ISIS contact threatened during the negotiation.Â
Reuters reported the rescue of a young Yezidi boy, Rojin, who had been captured and enslaved by ISIS along with his brother in 2014. At 13 years old, Rojin was taken to the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp in eastern Syria. He was held there alongside thousands of ISIS families and supporters after the organization's final defeat in the Syrian border town of Baghouz in 2019.
The Saudi ISIS fighter who had purchased Rojin then arranged for him to be smuggled from Al-Hol to Idlib. He was freed five years later, in November 2024, as HTS was preparing its lightning assault on Aleppo.
Reuters reported that in another case, a 21-year-old Yezidi named Adnan Zandenan received a Facebook message from a younger brother he presumed was dead, but who also had been trafficked to Idlib.
âMy hands were trembling. I thought one of my friends was messing with me,â Zandenan recalled. However, Zandenan's euphoria quickly turned to despair when his brother, now 18 years old and thoroughly brainwashed by extremist Salafi ideology, refused to leave Idlib and return to the Yezidi community in Sinjar.
The repackaged caliphateÂ
In December 2024, just one day after Julani's HTS entered Damascus to topple Assad, Rudaw reported that a 29-year-old Yezidi woman had been rescued from slavery in Idlib.
The Iraqi Kurdish outlet stated that many Yezidi women have been rescued from the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp.
However, others âhave been found in areas of Syria controlled by rebels [HTS] or Turkish-backed armed groups [SNA], and some have been located in third countries,â it added.
In the days following Assadâs fall, jubilant crowds took to city squares, chanting in support of Julani, now rebranded as Ahmad al-Sharaa.Â
Yet as western diplomats scrambled to meet the new ruler, the meaning of his âfreedomâ quickly became clear. The abductions of Alawite women â mirroring the Yezidi tragedy âsignaled that Julani had simply repackaged the ISIS model.Â
Under the guise of liberation, a brutal system of sectarian violence, enslavement, and rape was unleashed upon those now under his rule.
In response to growing denial, genocide expert Matthew Barber warned of the same pattern that surrounded the initial days of the Yezidi genocide: disbelief, dismissal, and derision â until the truth proved far worse.
âNo one believed it could be happening ⌠Even Western analysts and journalists did not believe our claims,â Barber said. âThe reality was even worse than what we were claiming.â
The victimsâ silence is not voluntary â it is coerced. And as this campaign of gendered terror continues, the question remains: How long will the world avert its gaze?"
