Australian-based ISIS victims don’t want the ‘brides’ settled here. For them, it’s personal |
Australian-based ISIS victims don’t want the ‘brides’ settled here. For them, it’s personal
May 31, 2026 — 5:00am
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Most Australians don’t want the so-called ISIS brides to come home to Australia, but for the Yazidi people who have immigrated here, the objection is personal.
There are about 4000 Yazidis living in Australia, mostly concentrated in regional communities such as Armidale, Coffs Harbour and Wagga Wagga in NSW, Toowoomba in South East Queensland and Mount Gambier in South Australia.
They are poster people for the success of multiculturalism – despite, or perhaps because of – the deep trauma they have brought with them from their experiences at home.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking ethnic minority from northern Iraq, and when ISIS captured the town of Sinjar in 2014, it carried out a genocide against them.
Many of the Yazidis in Australia are victims of ISIS.
Walking down the streets of Wagga and Mount Gambier, attending school in Toowoomba and catching the bus in Coffs, are survivors of unimaginable suffering – rape, slavery and vicious violence, and the quiet despair that comes with not knowing where family members and other loved ones are.
Two of the ISIS brides who returned to Melbourne earlier this month were charged with crimes against humanity relating to alleged slavery offences.
It’s difficult to think of a charge more barbaric – although the ABC’s Stephanie March has reported on an Australian man who allegedly joined ISIS (he........