Sabaya

The human­i­tar­i­an mis­sion of Mah­mud Resho and She­jk Ziyad, who run the Yazi­di Home Cen­ter in Syr­ia, is ded­i­cat­ed to lib­er­at­ing cap­tive women who are held as sabaya (sex slaves) by ISIS. Fol­low­ing a group into Al-Hol, one of the most dan­ger­ous camps in Syr­ia, Hogir Hirori’s dev­as­tat­ing doc­u­men­tary show­cas­es their self­less plight as they infil­trate Al-Hol in order to safe­guard the pro­tec­tion of these women.

Since the Islam­ic State’s mer­ci­less attacks on Sin­jar, the Yazidi’s ances­tral home­land, the Kur­dish peo­ple have wit­nessed mass killings, the abduc­tion of their chil­dren, and the sex­u­al enslave­ment of thou­sands of women and girls. Female oppres­sion is a com­mon denom­i­na­tor of mil­i­tary rule and reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism. With their fathers and broth­ers mur­dered by ISIS, many women become preg­nant under slav­ery; their bod­ies are treat­ed like prop­er­ty as they are sex­u­al­ly vio­lat­ed as pun­ish­ment for their polit­i­cal or reli­gious dis­sent (more often, the dis­sent of their male fam­i­ly members).

The Yazidis, while fac­ing per­se­cu­tion and sex­u­al sub­ju­ga­tion, have a cul­tur­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with puri­ty. So on top of these women fac­ing unspeak­able hor­rors as sabaya, their ​“com­pro­mised” puri­ty due to falling vic­tim to rape leads them to be unjust­ly blamed for the harass­ment they suffer.

Eschew­ing a con­ven­tion­al inter­view for­mat, the doc­u­men­tary fol­lows the res­cue process as it hap­pens. We hear sto­ries that are deeply upset­ting and see help­less pre­pu­bes­cent girls who have been treat­ed as sex objects before their minds are mature enough to ful­ly under­stand the trau­ma that they have endured. We don’t learn much about the men behind the Yazi­di Home Cen­ter, or why they’ve tak­en on this mis­sion, but this film is not about them.