Vian Dakhil, Iraqi MP and member of the yazidi community persecuted by IS, is expected to arrive in Antwerp within a few hours.
Dakhil comes back to Europe after the tragic accident of last 12th August, when she fell off the military helicopter she was flying on to offer help to the yazidi population on the Sinjar mountains, in Northern Iraq. The accident, which caused the death of the pilot, got the Iraqi MP a leg fracture.

Vian Dakhil comes to Antwerp to take part to the meeting Peace is the Future, Religion and Cultures in Dialogue 100 Years after World War I, taking place in the Belgian city from 7th until 9th September and organized by the Community of Saint Egidio.

On 12th August, just before the accident happened, Vian Dakhil had  reported to the press that the Sunni jihadists of IS were keeping as hostages more than 600 girls, members of the yazidi religious minority, in a prison in the Ninive province.
She said the girls were kept hostages in Badush. They had been kidnapped together with other members of the yazidi minority in Sinjar, close to Mosul. 

On 5th August, in a heartfelt speech in Parliament in Baghdad, Dakhil had denounced the ongoing genocide of the yazidi community and the IS attack to all minorities, including Christians.
In that instance she talked about the fate of women, sold and turned into slaves in the regions controlled by the fighters of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS). “They are brought to the souk in Mossul just like cattle – she had said - and sold by auction as slaves”. “The IS jihadists – she had said – impose their own old-fashioned rules in the regions they control in Central  and  North Iraq, especially in Mossul”, and she had reported that members of religious minorities, including Christians, were being assaulted and humiliated.

Vian Dakhil comes to Antwerp to take part to the Meeting organized by the Community of Saint Egidio and to help keep the media spotlight on Iraq and on the persecutions perpetrated by the IS. She will then take part to the round table dedicated to the search of a peaceful solution for her country, together with the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon Louis Raphaël I Sako, with Anwar Hadaya, member of the Council of the Ninive Province, with Kamal Muslim, Minister of Religious Affairs in Kurdistan, and with Sayyed Jawwad al Khoei, General Secretary of the Iraqi Trust «Al-Khoei».