German state takes in Yezidi victims of ISIS for emotional treatment

By Alla Shali

BERLIN, Germany – The German state of Baden-Wurttemberg has allocated 95 million euros for the psychological treatment of Yezidi Kurdish women and children who were taken captive by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in northern Iraq.

The funds will be used to treat Yezidi women and children who were victimized when the militants attacked their de facto capital of Shingal and surrounding villages a year ago. 

"We have selected those women and children who have faced rape or violence by ISIS,” said Dr. Michael Blumer, who decides which victims should be transferred to Germany. “The focus of the program is on those who cannot be treated in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq,” he said.

"We have discovered throughout the program that most of them have faced rape, violence and torture,” Blumer told Rudaw. “The youngest one is an eight-year-old girl. When we found her and took her here we felt that humanity is dead. This urges us even more to return them back to normal life," Blumer added.

Apart from the treatment program, victims will receive a two-year residence permit for Germany, extendable for permanent residence if they wish to remain in the country.

At the request of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), since March 253 women and children have been transported to the Baden-Wurttemberg region and 800 others are expected to arrive in September.  

“There are victims who had been sold (into slavery) several times by ISIS,” said Dr. Elhan Kizilhan, psychiatrist and head of the project’s medical team.  “They are devastated, if they are not treated many of them may commit suicide,” Kizilhan told Rudaw.