Eve Profiles Yezidi Activist Nadia Murad for TIME's "The 100 Most Influential People" Feature
4/26/2016
In 2014, Nadia Murad was kidnapped from her Kocho in Northern Iraq after ISIL militants ransacked her village and murdered hundreds of men and older women. After months of enslavement, suffering countless atrocities, she escaped and is speaking out to raise awareness of the girls who remain in captivity. Eve was asked by TIME Magazine to profile her as one of the 100 Most Influential People:
A Witness for War's Victims
Nadia Murad stands in a long, invisible history of fierce, indomitable women who rise from the scorched earth of rape during war to break the odious silence and demand justice and freedom for their sisters. At 19 she lost her home, her country, her culture, her mother to murder; witnessed male members of her family murdered in mass killings; and was kidnapped, sold and endlessly raped by members of ISIS. She now travels the world speaking out on the genocide being inflicted on her Yezidi people and demanding release for the more than 3,000 women still held in bondage.
As Europe closes its borders to terrorized refugees in Greece and the U.S. turns its back on the suffering, Nadia is a beacon of light and truth—a reminder that it was the American-led war in Iraq that laid the path for ISIS, that U.S. arms left behind on the battlefield fell into the hands of ISIS and that the U.S. waited too long to intervene in the mass killing and enslavement of the Yezidi people. At 23, Nadia Murad is risking everything to awaken us. I hope we are listening, because we too are responsible. - Ensler is a playwright and the founder of V-Day, a movement to end violence against women and girls