A controversial stunt to shock Londoners into seeing the brutality of Islamic State (IS) brought the terrorist group's horrific actions vividly to life on the streets of London last night. A harrowing video shows Kurdish protesters bringing the reality of IS's slave trade of captured women in Syria and Iraq to the capital. The protest saw a group of chained veiled women being led in front of the Houses of Parliament, Leicester Square and Downing Street - where costumed men urged the public to bid on them. "This happens every day in Iraq and Syria. We are bringing it to you," a man can be heard saying as four chained women scream desperately for help. One of the people behind the protest told Newsweek the protest was carried out to spark an “aggravated reaction,” highlighting the “crimes ISIS are committing in Iraq and Syria.” “What we wanted to show is that this could take place in London,” he said. Newsweek added that police had to instruct some passersby from confronting the protesters, but reported that no arrests were made. Islamic State fighters have captured, enslaved and sold Yazidi women and children, and claim the act is justified in Islam to prevent men from feeling "tempted" by other, non-enslaved women. According to a piece in the group's full-colour magazine, which is published in English and evidently aimed at a Western audience, confirms the long-rumoured atrocities committed by the group in Iraq, where Yazidi women have reported being kidnapped, sold for a few dollars and repeatedly raped. The latest issue of Dabiq magazine released on Sunday stated, "the enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers." It added, "the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations." Anyone opposing slavery in such circumstances is not a Muslim, the piece says. "Enslaving the families of the kuffār [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur'an... and thereby apostatizing from Islam." A Human Rights Watch report, which came out on Sunday, claimed hundreds of Yazidi men, women and children from Iraq are being held captive in makeshift detention facilities by the group. The report follows two UN officials issuing a joint statement on the "barbaric acts" of sexual violence committed by ISIS fighters. "We condemn, in the strongest terms, the explicit targeting of women and children and the barbaric acts the 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' has perpetrated on minorities in areas under its control, and we remind all armed groups that acts of sexual violence are grave human rights violations that can be considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity," Nickolay Mladenov, special representative of the UN secretary-general for Iraq and Zainab Hawa Bangura, special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, said. The statement, reported by Newsweek, cited evidence of "savage rapes" being used as weapons of war against women and teenage boys and girls belonging to the Yazidi, Christian, Turkomen and Shabak minority groups in Iraq. Academic and Middle East expert Haleh Esfandiari has said IS allow their followers to rape captured girls and women as a "reward". "ISIS has received considerable world attention for its savage beheadings, executions of captured soldiers and men in conquered towns and villages, violence against Christians and Shiites, and the destruction of non-Sunni shrines and places of worship," she blogged for the Wall Street Journal. "But its barbarity against women has been treated as a side issue. Arab and Muslim governments, vocal on the threat ISIS poses to regional stability, have been virtually silent on ISIS’s systemic degradation, abuse, and humiliation of women. "To the men of ISIS, women are an inferior race, to be enjoyed for sex and be discarded, or to be sold off as slaves." Amnesty International spokeswoman Donatella Rovera, who is in Iraq, told Huffington Post UK that, though the charity had not verified any cases of women suffering sexual abuse at the hands of IS, she said there was evidence that captured women were under "strong pressure to convert to Islam and strong pressure to marry (ISIS) fighters".

• published: 16 Oct 2014
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