The Australian government is understood to be considering whether to allow a Yazidi mother resettled in Australia to reunite with her teenage son, who was taken from her five years ago in Iraq and forced to fight with the so-called Islamic State.
Shvan* was recently freed after spending almost five years being held by the terrorist group and is now with his extended family in a refugee camp in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
The teenager, who says he is 18, told via video call in Kurdish-Kurmanji: “They treated me unkindly by beating me a lot, their treatment was inhumane, and to them, we were their slaves.
“There was a lot of brainwashing on a daily basis like military and religious education.”
Initially, Shvan says he was placed with other Yazidi children, but they were later separated. Source: Supplied
Shvan said he was interviewed by an Australian official at a hotel in northern Iraq on 10 July and that they told him to wait while the government considers his visa application.
The Department of Home Affairs would not confirm if his application is being considered and said it did not comment on individual cases.
He says he saw many dead bodies while fighting and that he “witnessed how [IS fighters] would beat Yazidi women”.
Since being set free in March, Shvan now longs to be reunited with his mother and five siblings, who were resettled in Australia last year under a refugee program.
The teen at the holy site of Lalish, about 15km east of Dohuk. He was recently freed after spending almost five years being held by IS. Source: Supplied
“If I don’t see my mother I will die ... hearing her voice is not enough, I want to go to her, see her and cuddle her,” he said.
If I don’t see my mother I will die ... hearing her voice is not enough. - Shvan, Yazidi teenager
Shvan’s mother is desperately pleading for the family to be reunited.
“My son is worth the whole world to me, and I am sure that my son would not do anything bad,” she said.
“When I heard my son was freed I was very happy, I could fly … He was freed from the hands of those infidels.”
Director of the Counter-Terrorism Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Isaac Kfir, said while not all children who were captured by IS will hold radical views and pose a potential security threat, some may.
“Over the past 15 years we have developed an exceptionally robust system of assessment and risk evaluation. Australia has some of the best people in the deradicalisation field in the world, we need to trust their assessment,” he said.
. SBS World News will also broadcast this story at 6.30pm on Tuesday 30 July.
*Not his real name
