Two Yazidi women who survived sexual enslavement by Islamic State before escaping and becoming advocates for their people in Iraq have won the EU’s Sakharov human rights prize.
Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar were abducted along with other Yazidi women in August 2014 when their home village of Kocho in northern Iraq was attacked by Isis jihadis.
The annual Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, established in 1988, is named after the Soviet physicist and outspoken dissident Andrei Sakharov and is awarded to “individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe”. Among the 2016 finalists were the Turkish journalist Can Dündar and the Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzemilev.
The EU described Murad and Aji Bashar as “public advocates for the Yazidi community in Iraq, a religious minority that has been the subject of a genocidal campaign by IS militants.”

source: guardian