Yazidi Former Sex Slaves: UK
Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Liz Saville Roberts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Brendan O'Hara
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and yes I do. However, that is an entirely separate issue to the one I am considering today. While we support and will continue to support the military defeat of Daesh, I will concentrate today specifically on this tiny minority—the members of the Yazidi community—who are in desperate need of our help.
These innocent women and children—whose plight, in many ways, has become emblematic of the base depravity and callous barbarism of Daesh—need our help. These innocent women and children have witnessed the slaughter of their husbands, their sons and their brothers as Daesh has attempted genocide to try to erase all trace of the Yazidi community, and they need our help. These innocent women and children, who come from a very traditional and conservative religious community, and may well have been physically and psychologically irreparably damaged, need our help.
My motion today simply says to the Government: when Mosul is liberated and these innocent Yazidi women and children are free from the sexual enslavement of Daesh, please do not let them become lost in the throng of civilians fleeing Mosul towards the refugee camps. I ask the Government to recognise what these women and children have gone through; to see them as the unique case that they are. Together let us find a specific UK response that recognises the unspeakable atrocities that they have suffered, simply because of who they are and what they believe.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I am sure that we are all aware that there are British citizens among the members of Daesh in Mosul and in Syria, and that they have committed crimes of violence against Yazidi women and other women. Will the hon. Gentleman join me—I am sure he will—in urging the Government to act as an agent of justice, collecting evidence so that justice may be brought against those British citizens?