Meet the Iraq genocide survivor and former professional boxer teaching female refugees to fight

When Isis launched an assault on the Sinjar region in 2014, thousands were subjected to what the UN described as ‘some of the most horrific crimes imaginable’. Katie O'Malley talks to the British charity on a mission to empower survivors

Lotus Flower’s goal is to help women release tension and gain confidence

The boxing ring is the last place you’d find most people seeking refuge. But it's where you'll find a group of 15 young women in a refugee camp in Qaida, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, who fled the clutches of Islamic State (Isis) militant groups.

“Boxing is a great way for them to channel their energy and rediscover their confidence,” says Taban Shoresh, founder of the Lotus Flower charity.

In October 2018, Shoresh’s charity, a non-profit that works with young girls and women affected by conflict, launched a pilot boxing scheme called Boxing Sisters in Iraq. The initiative’s aim is to help these women release tension, gain confidence, and enjoy a moment of solitude from the 3,000 Yazidi refugee families living in close proximity in the camp.

Isis militants attacked the northwestern Sinjar region, where the majority of the Yazidi population lived in August 2014. The group rounded up and separated the sexes, and girls as young as nine were tested for virginity, with many sold into sex slavery. A 2016 report by the United Nations said Isis subjected the Yazidi population from the area to “some of the most horrific crimes imaginable”.

The Rwanga refugee camp has been home to more than 15,000 displaced people, the majority of whom are Yazidis, since 2014. It is one of the 25 camps around Dohuk, located in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. It is here where Lotus Flower runs one of three centres focussing on providing young girls and women with education in mental health, human rights, and wellbeing.

“If these women weren’t boxing, they’d been stuck in their cabin 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They don’t have anything to do – that’s why our centres are a safe haven,” adds Shoresh, who understands all too well the trauma these refugees have suffered.

As a child, the British aid worker from Kurdistan survived genocide during Saddam Hussein’s era. At the age of four, the secret police imprisoned Shoresh and her family for two weeks, before they narrowly escaped being buried alive and becoming part of the 1986 Anfal genocide. After hiding, Shoresh’s political activist father was poisoned and the family fled the country, settling in the UK in 1988.

“From the age of zero to six, I’d seen quite a lot of trauma already,” she says.

It’s for this reason in August 2014 Shoresh left her job in the City and went back to Kurdistan following the Yazidi genocide. She stayed in the region for 15 months. “During that time, I worked very closely with the women and girls who were impacted by IS [Isis]. When I came back to the UK it felt natural to follow that path and support women and girls impacted by conflict and displacement,” she says.

A boxing sister shows off her skills in the Rwanga camp

The young girls and women currently attending Boxing Sisters classes vary in age (from 12 to 28) and experience. “Collectively, they’ve had their lives completely destroyed and turned upside down by Isis,” says Shoresh.

Many of those involved have had family members killed and been imprisoned. Shoresh reveals one 12-year-old Lotus Flower is working with was raped by six different men from Isis over a three year period.

Meanwhile, Hussna, a 17-year-old learning to box with Boxing Sisters, recalls the moment her family fled from the village of Tilqasib in Sinjar city when Isis attacked.

“No one knew what was happening and where they were going,” she recalls. “The only thing we knew is that we needed to run away. We didn’t know what this brutal group was doing and why they were killing innocent children, women, boys and men. Everyone was running on their feet on those streets while Isis gangs were shooting. It was like a nightmare happening in reality.”

Like the thousands of members from the Yazidi community, Hussna and her family escaped to the mountains where they hid for four days and nights with only a few drops of water and a piece of bread each day to survive.

Now living in the Rwanga camp with her family, Hussna – like the thousands of displaced women around her – is on a mission to fight back.

Charity hopes classes will help women and girls develop their inner strength

She admits she always dreamed of learning to box to make her “soul and body stronger”.

“When Isis attacked us, this desire of learning boxing increased – I want to learn how to fight back. I know it’s difficult to stand in front of someone holding weapons but I’m sure it would [have made] a difference if we knew how to fight back when Isis attacked us.”

“I train every day for one hour,” she explains. “I practice because it makes me feel strong and confident.”

Hussna’s steely determination to harness her strength is shared by ex-professional British boxer and cognitive behavioural therapist Cathy Brown, who has joined the Boxing Sisters programme to teach the young girls how to box.

However, a love of the sport isn’t the only commonality she has with several of the women she’s teaching.

Like many young Yazidi refugees, Brown has suffered sexual violence and turned to boxing to “find a sense of belonging and purpose”.

“The sport helped me develop an inner strength and the coping mechanisms to finally feel strong enough to speak about what I’d been through,” she notes.

It is her hope that the Boxing Sisters project will have a similar impact on the women taking part.

“Boxing helps naturally releases anger and aggression. When you start to be able to understand your anger, anxiety and depression, you then have the tools to unleash your emotions and deal with them in a more controlled fashion.

“What I do now is a unique style of therapy using boxing. I’m hoping to be there for the girls, not only as a boxing instructor but as a sounding board to try to help them develop the tools needed to work through their emotions.”

In July, Brown and Shoresh are initiating the next phase of the Boxing Sisters initiative. They will spend 10 days at the Rwanga camp developing the women’s skills and train a select few from the community to become boxing instructors and continue the programme for other women and girls.

The team, accompanied by Greg Williams, Brown’s husband and co-founder of boxing course provider Boxology, will work with the girls each morning “teaching them how to box properly safely, how to punch and execute a good amount of power from very little work”.

“One of the beautiful things about boxing is that it’s very meditative and you have to really concentrate on the skill and technique,” explains Brown.

“It takes you away from your own head, thinking about the placement of your hands, hips and feet. I want them to be able to be mindful of what they’re doing in that moment to be able to take them away from the trauma in their heads, even if it’s for just a fraction of time.”

In the afternoons, Brown will teach women aged over 18 in the group how to become boxing instructors themselves in the hope they’ll be able to use the skills one day to earn a living. Using Boxology’s app, which has more than 300 videos of boxing techniques, the former athlete believes she will be able to show the women how to box effectively and efficiently.

“Every technique we’ll teach them we’ve filmed, so we can leave the women with not only the education of how to box but provide the tools to enable them to move forward and teach other girls in the sport,” Brown explains.

Eventually, Lotus Flower hopes to send the trained boxers to other centres run by the charity in northern Iraq, creating a domino effect of women educating and empowering others across the region.

For now, the Boxing Sisters pilot project continues to prove invaluable to its students.

Shoresh explains: “Firstly, we haven’t had any backlash from the community which demonstrates the sensitivity we’ve used when coming into the region.

Lotus Flower is aiming to train boxers to become instructors

“Secondly, you can see how eager these girls now are to box, how they’re opening up and learning to manage their emotions.”

For girls like Hussna, she can already feel herself becoming stronger, more confident, and developing a sense of belonging in her “small family” of fellow boxers.

“It gives us the support and the safe space we really need to overcome our depression after the big atrocities we suffered especially losing many beloved friends and relatives,” she says.

“Women need to overcome their fear and shame. We are breaking the traditional norms that say women are only for baking and washing house. We need to be stronger and be confident. It’s through boxing that will be achieved.”

On the future of Boxing Sisters, Shoresh says the fight to help young women affected by conflict and displacement goes on.

“Where our centres go, Boxing Sisters should go.”