Protest in solidarity with female victims of terror

BEIRUT: Over 50 protesters gathered outside of ESCWA Tuesday to show solidarity with women affected by terrorism.

“We have organized this gathering today in solidarity with women in the region,” Manar Zaiter, a lawyer with the Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering (RDFL), told The Daily Star. “The idea is to bring attention to the situation that is happening across the region and that the worst things are happening to women.”

RDFL organized the protest that was attended by several Iraqi and Syrian women, at the Gibran Khalil Gibran Garden, in front of the ESCWA building in Downtown Beirut.

In recent months, ISIS - an Al-Qaeda offshoot - has created a self-proclaimed "Islamic Caliphate" covering swaths of territory in Iraq and northeastern Syria. The group's notoriety was launched after their shock seizure of Iraq's second city Mosul and subsequent lightning strikes saw it gain more Iraqi territory while consolidating its hold in Syria.

There have been several reports alleging that ISIS fighters were raping women and forcing them into labor in the areas which they control, as well as setting up marriage bureaus, where virgins and widows were married off to fighters.

While news headlines have been dominated by the sectarian issues sparked by ISIS - such as the groups desecration of churches and Shiite shrines, and its call to conversion or death - there has been minimal coverage of the extent to which women are suffering in ISIS's new "caliphate."

The protestors Tuesday raised a large banner with pictures of niqab adorned women in chains walking in single file with the slogan “Women Facing Terrorism” - the word terrorism emphasized in blood red. A teenager at the front of the group also held a sign that read: “Yazidi and Christian women are being sold on the market.”

Father Mazin al-Tokum, a Syriac Catholic from Mosul who moved to Lebanon recently, was present at the protest.

“[We want to stand up for the] Iraqi women that suffered the Iraq-Iran war in the 80's, who survived and were patient. They held on in the face of economic siege,” Al Tokum said. “It’s unfair that it’s always the people that loose, not the government.”

The priest went on to say that, despite the media attention on attacks on marginalized groups, all Iraqi people were suffering under the terrorists’ oppression.

“We praise God, who is merciful, the way we want to, not the way they tell us too,” Al-Tokum said.

There were also several women from Syria and Iraq present at the protest.

Nijad came to Lebanon from Mosul two years ago but several of her family members remain in Iraq. Her two sisters are currently homeless in Irbil.

“[My sisters] are sleeping on the streets ... they took our houses and everything we had. They came into all of our houses and took them away. What are we supposed to do?”