US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, 17 July, questioned the relevance of Yazidi activist and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nadia Murad, along with the survivors of religious persecution, was in the US for three days for a meeting on religious freedom in the State Department, reported NDTV. She was meeting Trump on the sidelines of the meeting.
Murad was one among the thousands of women and girls who were abducted by ISIS in 2014 as they overran swathes of Iraq. She explained to Trump how her mother and six brothers were killed and that 3,000 Yazidis still remaining missing. She further went on to plead Trump to help the Yazidis of Iraq.
Trump’s reaction was:
“And you had the Nobel Prize? That’s incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?”Donald Trump, US President
After a two second pause, Murad replied,
“After all this happened to me, I didn’t give up. I make it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women. Please do something. It’s not about one family,”Nadia Murad, Yazidi Activist
While Trump boasted about the defeat of the ISIS brought about by the US, the president seemed to keep quiet when Murad asked him to pressurise the Iraqi and Kurdish governments to create a safe environment for the Yazidis to return, many of whom have taken refuge in Germany as of today.
The Trump Administration has always been at the forefront of promoting religious freedom, an important criteria of his fundamentalist Christian base.
(With Inputs from NDTV)
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