KNK campaign calls for urgent action from OIC against ISIS

KNK campaign calls for urgent action from OIC against ISIS-

ANF - BRUSSELSKurdistan National Congress (KNK) Women’s Commission has launched an open letter campaign calling on the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to take urgent action for the release of all the Yezidi and Kakei Kurdish, Shia Turkmen, Arab and Christian Syriac women and girls recently abducted by ISIS and put on sale at 


slave markets.

KNK Women’s Commission has recently held talks with the Islamic parties represented in the parliament of South Kurdistan in order for the release of all the women and girls abducted by ISIS gangs.

As a continuation of this initiative, the Women’s Commission of KNK launched an open letter campaign calling on the umbrella organisation of the Islamic states, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to take urgent action for the liberation of captive women.

The campaign letter which is circulated internationally among women’s organisations and persons has been supported and signed by many women in Kurdistan and the Middle East.

The letter addresses Iyad Ameen Madani, the General Secretary of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that has its headquarters in the Jeddah city in Saudi Arabia.

KNK called all the women and the women organisations to support the campaign and to sign the letter.

The letter is as follows:

“Urgent Call to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation

Stop the IS genocide and femicide in Kurdistan

Your Excellency,

As is also known by your side, the Islamic State abuses Islam and conflicts with it. This approach enables the advancement of Islamophobia which your organisation, the OIC, is trying to prevent. We know that the main reason why ISIS uses the Islamic identity is that by doing this they want to cover up their expansion and occupation strategies in Kurdistan and the Middle East. A number of international media report that the IS is backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Gulf States, which all are member states of the OIC. Therefore, we call on you, the Secretary General of the IOC, to use your authority and warn the mentioned member states to stop this dirty war.

Since the occupation of Mosul we, the peoples and women in Kurdistan, are now confronted with a terror which primarily aims to use all kinds of violence methods against women.

In this war of IS, women are regarded as an object on the way to victory, war booty in other words; an approach born by all other powers seeking domination.

Targeting women particularly is a political method implemented in many conflicts to put societies under the control of states and then to surrender them. This policy which targets the sense of honor dominantly born by men in Kurdistan in particular and in the Middle East in general aims to break their resistance. This policy greatly damages both the social reality and women’s gender identity. The IS focuses its war on controlling the psychology of societies and their social environment.

In all the cultures and traditions of all components in Kurdistan, the capture of a woman by the enemy is regarded as a matter of “honor” by the family and the tribe. Through the policy of women abduction, ISIS intends to weaken and defeat the resistance by targeting the moral value judgment of the component societies in question. ISIS justifies the brutal practices against women with the “war booty” concept in the Islamic culture related with victory in war.

ISIS members also give themselves the right to abduct women as war booty and sell them at markets in Mosul and Tel Afar. Markets of women slaves are therefore growing more and more in the regions controlled by ISIS.

By advancing a systematic policy of rape, which is the most common form of the ISIS strategy of conquest, ISIS aims to impose surrender and to ensure a domination in the body and mind.

The actions of IS aim at conquest, occupation and rulership. Occupation of women's bodies is a basic war strategy used in all similar wars. As a result, the policy of degrading women into an object position and subjecting them to massacre is justified by ISIS with Islamic values. Femicide will become politically, culturally and legally normalized as a systematical extermination of women unless urgent and serious international action are taken against ISIS. It is not only physical but also cultural, political, social and psychological massacres resulted by the most destructive aspect of wars against societies.

ISIS continues its war with all its brutality, leaving behind a vast number of women murdered, injured and broken. This is a gendered war of the male-dominant Islamic State against the nation of women in Kurdistan and the Middle East.

Your Excellency,

We ask you to;

- use your authority in order for the release of all women held by ISIS as slaves in Mosul, Tal Afar and elsewhere

- stop femicide which goes contrary to Islam

- bring up the femicide question to the agenda of the OIC as a crime against humanity.”

The letters signed as part of the campaign can be sent to the following address;

H.E. Mr. Iyad Ameen Madani

Secretary General of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation

P.O. Box 178, Jeddah 21411, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Fax: + 966 12 651 22 88

E-Mail oic@oic-un.org