Inside the vote: how Tory MP Michelle Rempel passed her motion on the Yazidis
OTTAWA — Nadia Murad had tears in her eyes as she described the power that individual MPs can have when they stand up to vote.
A few minutes earlier, she had watched 313 MPs vote unanimously in favour of a Conservative motion to recognize that the violence perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against the Yazidis constitutes genocide — and commit to providing asylum to women and girls from the persecuted minority group within 120 days.
Speaking through an interpreter last week, Murad — a 23-year-old Yazidi activist who had escaped sexual slavery by the Islamic militant group after they raided her village in northern Iraq — told reporters she felt ISIL losing power with every MP who stood up to vote for the motion.
“(They) never thought their slaves will one day come out and will be speaking against them,” she said.