U.S. officials say the military is exploring plans for an international rescue mission to save thousands of desperate Yazidi refugees trapped in an Iraqi mountain range by Sunni militants. WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum joins the News Hub with the details. Photo: Getty

THE brutalisation and sexual slavery of women and girls has become central to the ISIS ideology, with “pretty” virgins sold at auctions and women killed and raped.

Authorities dealing with the atrocities committed against women are calling it the institutionalisation of sexual violence, as reports emerge form the UN of ISIS militants burning a woman alive for refusing to engage in an “extreme” sex act.

Last month, the Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the system of organised rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery and forced marriage by ISIS militants.

The organisation’s women’s rights director, Liesl Gernthol, said many women and girls are still missing, and “those fortunate enough to have escaped need to be treated for the unimaginable trauma they endured”.

The Human Rights Watch interviewed 11 Yazidi women and 9 girls who had escaped capture by ISIS between September 2014 and January 2015.

Half — which included 12-year-old girls — had been raped, some more than once by ISIS fighters.

Nearly all had been forced into marriage, sold, or given as gifts.

Interviews with the women and girls show a life of cruelty and abuse, with one girl saying ISIS members, wanting to find out who “desecrated” the Koran, handcuffed and blindfolded two other girls, beating them with a cable before firing a gunshot into the air. The vandal turned out to have been a cat.

Zainab Bangura, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently toured Syrian and Iraq refugee camps, conducting interviews with victims and families about the experienced with Islamic State militants.

Ms Bangura recalled one of the worst scenarios of abuse against women and girls.

“After attacking a village, [the Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over.

“The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness.

“The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold,” she said in The Independent. They are then stripped naked and categorised by ISIS fighters before being shipped off to “slave bazaars”.

According to the excerpt, sheiks always get first choice of girls, followed by emirs and finally, fighters.

Girls are often traded more than 20 times — usually on a monthly basis — depending on how attractive their owners find them.

Once the men who bought them become bored, the girls go back of the market, often with a reduced value due to their usage, and are evaluated according to other attractiveness, breast size and more.

Ms Bangura has since called for authorities to step up, warning that neither the UN nor regional authorities had the capacity to help all of the women who had escaped slavery.

Last year Australian ­Islamic State fighter Mohamed ­Elomar tweeted a picture of an enslaved girl he claims to own offered for sale.

Elomar claimed the girl was one of the persecuted Yazidis. He wrote: “Anyone interested got 1 of 7 yehzidi slave girls for sale,” he said.

“$2500 each … don’t worry brothers she won’t dissapoint (sic) you.”

Who are the Yazidis

According to Human Rights Watch, the Yazidis are a people who live mainly in Iraq’s Nineveh province, land that has been claimed by both the Kurdistan regional government and the Iraqi government.

Other Yazidi communities congregate in Armenia, Georgia, and Syria, and have, since the 1990s, been migrating to Europe, especially to Germany.

In Iraq, they are viewed as heretics for practising an ancient monotheistic religion, and have been persecuted for hundreds of years.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Sunni Arab extremists began a series of vicious attacks against the civilisation, which includes four truck bombings that killed 300 and wounded more than 700 in nearby communities.

Kurdistan authorities consider Yazidis to be Kurds, and any region they occupy to be part of Kurdistan.

ISIS response

ISIS has justified its treatment of women and girls in its magazine, Dabiq, saying Islam permits sex with non-Muslim “slaves”, which includes girls, in addition to beating and selling them.

In a lengthy explanation of how Yazidi citizens should be sold, enslaved and beaten until they repent and convert, the magazine dictates that unlike other female apostates — “who can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword” — the Yazidi women and children should be captured and divided “according to the Shari’ah among the fighters of the Islamic State”.

“You are the best people for people. You bring them with chains around their necks, until they enter Islam,” the publication quotes, citing Allah.

A jihadi bride, whose husband has enslaved a Yazidi woman, penned an article explaining how raping a Yazidi sex slave is a righteous act dictated by the Koran.

“[It is] a “great prophetic Sunnah (way of life prescribed by Prophet Mohammad) containing many divine wisdoms and religious benefits”, she cited.

The woman, who called herself Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah, also attempted to insult US First lady Michelle Obama, saying her value as a sex slave would not be more than $40.

“And who knows, maybe Michelle Obama’s price won’t even exceed a third of a dīnār, and a third of a dīnār is too much for her!” the woman is reported have said.