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Fighting to free the women and children enslaved by IS – BBC
In 2014, thousands of Yazidi women and children were enslaved by the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria. Their fellow Yazidis launched a rescue effort almost immediately, but nearly a decade later, their task is still unfinished.
In November 2015, Bahar and her three young children had just been sold for the fifth time.
She had been one of many Yazidi women taken prisoner by IS, who had swept into her village in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq 18 months earlier. A religious minority living in Iraq for nearly 6,000 years, the Yazidis were considered infidels by the IS fighters.
Her husband and eldest son had been taken away. She believes they were shot and buried in a mass grave.
Bahar remembers how she and her three other children were all lined up in a room, crying because they thought they would be beheaded. But instead, they were being sold.
That's when the horror really began.
Bahar says she had to serve the IS fighters whose property she became. "I had to act like their wives, when they wanted. They would beat me if they wanted to." Her children, all under the age of 10, were also beaten. One of her daughters was smashed in the face with a rifle butt.
Her fourth "owner" was a Tunisian called Abu Khattab. "We stayed at his home, but he would also loan me out to work as a cleaner at two other IS bases. At all these places, I would go to work, I would clean and I would be raped.
"And there were air raids all the time. IS fighters would be running around, getting weapons, or hiding from the bombing. It was chaos, it was worse than a nightmare."
One day, when Bahar and her children were in Abu Khattab's house, a white car with blacked-out windows pulled up. The driver was dressed in black with a long beard, and looked no different from many other IS fighters.
Bahar realised she and her children were being sold once more. Overwhelmed with the situation, Bahar screamed at the man to just kill her – she couldn't bear any more.
But what happened next changed everything.
As they drove off, the driver said, "I am taking you somewhere else." Bahar didn't know what was happening or trust the man, and she began to get frantic. He stopped the car, and called someone on his phone. He then handed the phone to Bahar. It was the voice of Abu Shuja, a man known to have arranged the rescue of many women and children. Now she realised that the driver had bought her so she and her children could also be rescued.
Bahar was driven to a construction site somewhere near Raqqa, in Syria. She was dropped off and told that a man would come, and say the code word "Sayeed". She should go with him.
Sure enough, someone arrived on a motorbike, and uttered the word. He told Bahar and her three children to get on his motorbike, and said, "Listen, we are in IS territory, there are checkpoints. If they ask you anything, don't say a word, so they don't recognise your Yazidi accent."
Since the defeat of IS in 2017, the traumatized Yazidi community has tried to recover. And yet, as Rachel Wright reports, more than 100,000 Yazidis remain stuck in camps, unable to return to their homes.
Listen to Assignment: What's happened to Iraq's Yazidis on BBC World Service at 02:32 GMT (03:32 BST) on Thursday 6 July, or online at BBC Sounds
Bahar says that the man took them to his home: "They were so nice to us there – we showered, they gave us food and painkillers and they said, 'You are in safe hands now'."
Another man took pictures of Bahar and her children and sent them to Abu Shuja to prove that he had the right people. Then at about 03:00 the next morning, the family was woken up and told to get ready to move again. The man whose house they were staying in gave Bahar his mother's ID card and said that if anyone should stop and ask, she should say she was taking her son to visit the doctor. "We drove through lots of IS checkpoints but no-one stopped us."
Finally they got to a village on the Syrian/Iraqi border and Bahar was met by Abu Shuja and her brother. "I was on the verge of collapse," she says. "I don't remember much else that happened after that."
More than 6,400 Yazidi women and children are thought to have been sold into slavery after IS captured Sinjar. Another 5,000 Yazidis were murdered in what a UN commission termed a genocide.
Abu Shuja, who arranged Bahar's rescue, wasn't the only one to be concerned about the women and children kidnapped by IS. Businessman Bahzad Fahran, who lived outside of IS-controlled areas had set up a group called Kinyat – to rescue Yazidi women and children and record the crimes of IS fighters.
Kinyat got word that IS fighters were buying and selling kidnapped Yazidi women and children online, particularly on Telegram. "We would infiltrate these online groups under borrowed names or using IS fighters' names," says Bahzad.
On the wall of his office in the Kurdish area of Iraq, he points to printed-out screenshots of the Telegram chats that he saw. One of them is in English, advertising a girl for sale: "12 yrs old not virgin very beautiful". She cost $13,000 (£10,000) and was in Raqqa in Syria. Then he shows me a picture of the girl posing in a suggestive way on a leather sofa.
Bahzad says that these Telegram chats would give details of where the kidnapped Yazidis were located: "We would get in touch with people living around there and ask them to look for this kid."
It was easier to find young boys because they were allowed out of the house more: "We'd also get the [kidnapped person's] family to send information so when we confronted the boy, we could give them evidence that we were genuine," says Bahzad.
"When we were rescuing families, like women with their children, we had to have a series of codes, or signals to let them know we were there to rescue them, and to let us know when they are alone."
The process differed in every case, but each one involved money, and fake documents to get through IS group checkpoints.
It was too risky for Yazidis to enter IS areas, so the act of rescue had to be carried out by local smugglers, who were more used to shifting cigarettes and forbidden alcohol.
"These guys did it all for cash," says Bahzad. "That was their only motive. Many people were paid thousands of dollars to buy back these girls."
Kinyat says that 6,417 Yazidis were taken captive, but 3,568 either escaped or were rescued. Bahzad himself rescued 55 people but according to the UN-backed International Organization for Migration (IOM), about 2,700 Yazidi women and children are still missing. Many of them could still be with their kidnappers.
Bahzad says that it has become more and more complicated to trace victims. After IS was defeated, the fighters and their families fled to other areas. Some are in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and some even went to Europe.
Bahzad says there are Yazidi children who were five or six when they were abducted and who have completely forgotten their language or who they are: "They don't know anything about being Yazidi. And they even forgot their families."
The wider future for the Yazidi people also remains uncertain.
"The Yazidis have been under attack for many centuries, and a lot of the Muslim population, younger or older, still believe they should convert or die," says Haider Elias, the head of the largest Yazidi advocacy organisation, Yazda. "And that's why we believe IS is not the extent of it, or the end of it, and that's a big fear for the Yazidis."
Of the 300,000 Yazidis who fled their homes in Sinjar from IS, almost half are – like Bahar – still living in tented camps in the Kurdish region of Iraq. They can't go back to their homes in Sinjar district because it has been almost completely destroyed, and its strategic position on the Iraqi/Syria border makes it dangerous territory – with militias who came to fight IS now fighting each other for supremacy.
Elias says the community is frightened that it will be the subject of another massacre at any time, and that many Yazidis are now migrating. "A sense of security is really important for them. It's a big thing. They don't feel secure."
It cost about £16,000 ($20,000) to buy Bahar's freedom. She's 40 years old now, but looks older than her age – beneath her headscarf her hair is now mostly grey.
She has lived in a camp for eight years since her rescue. Sitting on a thin mattress on the floor of her tent, she takes out a plastic folder with pictures of her missing family members.
Not knowing what happened to her husband and eldest son, and dealing with the trauma of being repeatedly raped, has made Bahar very ill – both physically and emotionally.
Her other children are still with her, but she says they are still in shock, and anxious all the time. "My daughter has injuries from the beatings she endured," she says. "I have to keep fighting and keep going. But at the moment, the way we are right now, it's like being the living dead."
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David Goyer Shares Details About David Fincher’s Two-Hour ‘Blade’ Meeting: ‘It Was Such a Fleshed-Out Pitch’ – Yahoo Entertainment
David Fincher hasn’t worked on a blockbuster franchise since making his infamous directorial debut on “Alien 3” — a film that he has since disavowed due to what he saw as excessive studio interference — but he has flirted with taking on big properties on multiple occasions. He spent years developing an adaptation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” for Disney with the intention of casting Brad Pitt. And more recently, he was briefly attached to direct Pitt in a “World War Z” sequel.
Fincher obsessives who are curious about his would-be blockbusters received an interesting tidbit this week when David Goyer made an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Goyer is best known for writing DC movies for both Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder, but he began his career as a superhero scribe by writing all three “Blade” movies. On the podcast, he revealed that he collaborated with Fincher to develop the first film, with the “Fight Club” director being considered to helm the project.
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“I developed a draft with Fincher before he had done ‘Se7en,’” Goyer said. “I think he had done ‘Alien 3’ and maybe he was developing ‘Se7en.’ I developed a draft with him. I remember going to our producers office… There was this giant conference table. Fincher laid out 40 to 50 books of photography and art with Post-It notes inside them. He said, ‘This is the movie.’”
Goyer revealed that Fincher pitched his vision for the film with predictably meticulous detail. While Fincher did not ultimately end up directing “Blade,” the screenwriter explained that his creative influence was felt throughout the finished product.
“[Fincher] took us on a two-hour tour around the table of the aesthetics of this scene, that character,” Goyer said. “It was such a fully fleshed-out visual pitch… I had never seen something like that before. A lot of that thinking infused my further revisions.”
Fincher’s next film, the Michael Fassbender-led serial killer drama “The Killer,” recently premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Netflix will release the film in theaters on Friday, October 27 before it begins streaming on Friday, November 10.
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By Boxing Bob Newman at ringside
In a highly skilled and very tactical fight, Junior Lightweights Abraham “Super” Nova and Adam “Blu Nose” Lopez lived up to the predictions that they might deliver the fight of the night. After three tactical rounds, things heated up in the fourth with a nice toe to toe exchange late in the round. In the fifth, a beautiful right-left-right combination deposited Lopez hard on his back. As Nova tried to cut off the ring and follow up on his advantage, he could be heard saying, “It’s my birthday…I got to get this win,” to a retreating Lopez. (It is in fact Nova’s 29th birthday). Nova was credited with another knockdown in the sixth, as Lopez tried to hold on after being raked along the ropes and stumbled to the canvas when he couldn’t keep his grip on a backpedaling Nova. Lopez managed to gather himself in the seventh and actually appeared to take the eighth, snapping Nova’s head with some beautiful combinations at the end of the round.
Nova was able to hop on his bicycle in the ninth and hold off a charging Lopez with his jab. The tenth and final round was something out of the movies. Both men teed off on each other seemingly non-Stop for easily two out of the three minutes that the round lasted. It was amazing that nobody went down, but Nova capped the round and the fight off by staggering Lopez with the final blows of the fight. Even though 2023 is only 14 days old, it will take some doing to pass this is the round of the year! The final scores were 97-91 and 98-90 twice, all for Nova who comes back with a hard fought win after his loss to Robeisy Ramirez last year, raising his record to 22-1 15 KOs. The hard luck Lopez falls to 16-4, KOs.
Photos: Bob Newman
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Other Results…
Jr. Lightweight prospect Haven Brady, Jr. had a tougher than expected task in Colombian Ruben Cervera. While Brady looked to pick his shots, Cervera was landing a few of his own, bloodying Brady’s lower lip by the end of the second. It became a game of single shots where Brady would vocalize with each blow he threw. Seconds before the end of the fifth, Cervera nailed Brady with an overhand right that stunned him. Cervera tries to follow up and one of his blows did land after the bell, prompting a warning from referee Benjy Esteves, Jr. It appeared that Brady was a bit busier each in each round and really capped it off in the eighth and final round by controlling the ring and dictating the action to the final bell. The final tally read: 78-74, 79-73 and 80-72, all for Brady, Jr. who moves to 9-0, 4 KOs. Cervera slides to 13-4, 11 KOs.
* * *
Local darling Bryce Mills, fighting in front of hometown fans for the first time in his young career put on a solid, workman like performance over tough Margarito Hernandez. Mills displayed excellent skills, footwork and angles in systematically controlling Hernandez over the six rounds. At the end of the second, referee Charlie Fitch called in the doctor to check for bleeding from the left ear of Hernandez, which turned out to be a cut just inside the ear and not internal bleeding from the eardrum. Try as he might Mills could not stop or even drop Hernandez and he did take a few shots from the gritty Washingtonian. In the end, all three judges saw it 60-54 for Mills 11-1, 4KOs. Hernandez slips under .500 at 3-4-1.
* * *
Rising welterweight knockout artist Brian Norman, Jr. tried to blitz Rodrigo Coria in the opening round and almost pulled off the trick. Coria appeared out on his feet seconds into the about, the bottom strand of rope in the neutral corner holding him up, but referee Mark Nelson let matters continue when Coria fought back. Norman Jr. appeared to tire and then paced himself for the rest of the round, letting Coria off the hook. The pace slowed markedly the second, then Norman picked things up a little bit more in the third, but Coria did back Norman to the ropes with some good body work. Coria controlled the fourth with good jabs and body work again along the ropes.
The fifth round saw both men doing good work, each taking a turn controlling pieces of the action. In the seventh, Coria landed some telling headshots in rapid succession, buckling Norman’s knees and having him groggy along the ropes. Norman was able to escape and survive the round but the crowd was now revved up! Seconds into the eighth and final round, Norman had Coria in a neutral corner when he himself was clipped and buckled again. He quickly recovered encountered cleanly, dropping Coria to his knees and bringing the crowd to its feet. It wasn’t over though as Coria fought back and stunned Norman again along the ropes. There would be no knockout. The scores were 79-72 and 77-74 twice, all for Norman, Jr. who moves to 23-0, 19 KOs, while the gallant Coria falls to 10-5, 2 KOs.
* * *
In the second fight of the night, featherweight prospect Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington controlled Juan Antonio Lopez over 6 pedestrian rounds for a 60-54 sweep on all three judges’ scorecards. Lopez talked almost as much as he threw punches, trying to psych out the highly touted prospect Carrington. Neither fighter was hurt along the way. “Shu Shu” moves to 6-0, 3 KOs, while Lopez falls to 17-13-1, 7 KOs.
* * *
In a rare battle of novice unbeatens, Dante Benjamin, Jr. took on Emmanueal Austin in a scheduled six round light heavyweight opener. After a half round of feeling each other out, Benjamin shook Austin with a combination, finally dropping him near his own corner. A follow-up barrage had Austin reeling, forcing referee Mark Nelson to stop matters at 2:50 of the opening stanza. Benjamin Jr is now 5-0, 3KOs, while Austin loses his first at 6-1, 6KO.
That’s a great win for Nova coming off a blowout loss.
I absolutely HATE when they put another sport on right before the fight because you know it’s going to run over. It’s worst when it’s baseball, but with all those timeouts at the end of close basketball games, those things can run on and on and on.
Let’s see him step it up now
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Visarg Acharya
Reviewed by: Sayantan Choudhary
The Marvel Cinematic Universe keeps its movies PG-13 for a reason. Kids as well as adults enjoy these superhero movies but the MCU has broken the rule several times. Edward Norton portrayed the character of Hulk in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk quite more brutally than Mark Ruffalo.
Talking about the movie that wasn’t much of a success, fans were reminded of what the early MCU used to look like. In a brutal scene in the movie, people around the world were quit shocked when Edward Norton’s Hulk kicks Tim Roth’s Abomination into a tree with a little blood splattering on-screen!
Admittedly, the MCU hadn’t fully established itself as a cinematic universe when The Incredible Hulk was released back in 2008 the Hulk was still a part of the Marvel comics. Edward Norton, from the Fight Club fame, decided to join in for the ride by portraying the role of Bruce Banner in the movie.
Also read: “This ain’t gonna work”: Matt Damon Made a Life Changing Decision With Ben Affleck After Edward Norton Schooled Him in an Audition For an Oscar Worthy Role
Although the movie did not meet people’s expectations, the film had its fair share of iconic scenes and clips. One of the notable scenes was the Hulk fighting against Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky. Being a fearless soldier tasked with killing Bruce Banner, Tim Roth had an exceptional fight scene with the Hulk.
After the fight is over, Blonsky walks up to Norton in his Hulk form and asks “Is that it? Is that all you got?”. This results in the Hulk getting angrier and kicking Blonsky so hard that he flies a few feet away. The scene depicts Blonsky hitting the ground and rolling towards a tree stump. With a hard thud, the character lands face-first into the tree stump and his body sinks to the ground.
Although the focus is on General Ross during that scene, the out-of-focus face of Blonsky shows quite a significant amount of bleeding. The scene is intense and terrifying at the same time which showcased the fact that Edward Norton’s Hulk was indeed more devastating and chaotic compared to Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk in the MCU.
Suggested: ‘The Godfather’ Director Chose Matt Damon Over Marvel Star Edward Norton Because of Damon’s $100 Million War Movie With Denzel Washington
Related: “I didn’t feel that it was honored”: Breaking Bad Star Bryan Cranston Revealed He Would Never Work With Director Who Clashed With Edward Norton During Their $20M Movie
It could have been a very likely possibility that the scene mentioned above was written by Edward Norton himself. According to film trivia, Tim Roth (who got kicked in the face) stated that Norton used to re-write his scenes every day while on the sets of The Incredible Hulk.
The Fight Club actor and Liv Tyler also used to sit down every day and talk for hours before filming would start. As per the trivia, the duo would discuss their character’s lives especially before Bruce Banner became the Hulk which helped with the bonding between them. The Incredible Hulk received a rating of 6.6/10 on IMDB and 67% on Rotten Tomatoes and wasn’t much of a success. The 2008 film is available to stream on Disney+.
Source: ScreenRant, IMDB
Visarg Acharya joined FandomWire in 2022 as a Content Writer. Along with a penchant for writing, Visarg claims that words are the only true language made for him. Currently pursuing his B.Sc in Physics, the combination of Physics and Marvel make up for an interesting talk. Visarg Acharya has authored over 500 articles and reads books in his spare time along with an occasional series to accompany him.
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