British media, including the publicly-funded BBC and the Times, has come under fire for their portrayal of former “ISIS bride” Shamima Begum as a victim and celebrity in a bid to restore her UK citizenship.
Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship after traveling to Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State terror group, has become part of a “glamorized newswashing campaign” to help get her British citizenship back ahead of a ruling by the UK’s Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal, the Gatestone Institute think tank reported.
Earlier this month, Begum was featured on the cover of The Times Magazine and in an eight-page feature. In a Times report titled, “Shamima Begum is not a threat: She’s totally broken and needs help,” Begum is portrayed as innocent and little mention is made of Islamic State atrocities.
Report: ‘British’ ISIS Bride Was Cruel Sharia Enforcer, Not ‘Housewife’ https://t.co/RYkZeLH8dI
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 14, 2019
The BBC produced both a film and 10-part podcast series about the former terror member’s journey to Syria. According to Gateston, instead of focusing on the genocidal crimes the Islamic State committed against its victims and interviewing the victims directly, the BBC series and documentary largely deal with a “glossy portrait of why and how Begum joined ISIS and her subsequent life there.”
The Financial Times also published an oped titled, The UK should see Shamima Begum for what she is: a victim.
As per the Gatestone Institute:
ISIS brides were complicit in ISIS’s genocide and crimes against humanity. Never mind that hostages were hung upside down and then burned alive, or locked in cages then lowered into water to drown, or crucified for hours “like Jesus;” or that children were crucified or sold as sex slaves; or that countless others were tortured, raped or lined up to have their throats slit.
Never mind the beheadings of journalists such as James Foley or Steven Sotloff, or the Syrian scholar Khaled al-Asaad, 82, who was tortured for a month, then beheaded because he refused to turn over Palmyra’s priceless antiquities to ISIS….
ISIS murdered thousands, and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands. ISIS also systematically committed crimes such as forced conversions, hostage taking, rapes of children and women, sexual slavery, theft, destruction, smuggling, disappearances and recruitment of boys as child soldiers. Their methods of violence not only included beheadings and crucifixions, but also mutilations, dismemberment, stoning and forcing hostages to kneel on explosives. Countless people became refugees and remain displaced due to the ISIS genocide.
The Free Yezidi Foundation, citing the Netherlands Ministry of the Interior, said that female members of the Islamic State were often perceived as being “passive, naïve, or even as victims,” which it said was a “dangerous and wildly inaccurate characterization.”
In the case of Begum, now 23, she had claimed she was only a housewife and “did not participate in any heinous crimes or violation of human rights.”
According to the ministry, she was portrayed as “an innocent schoolgirl who was brainwashed, uninformed, and simply wanted to return home to Britain.”
However, evidence now suggests that she was in fact a member of the ISIS ‘morality police, a group of ISIS women which was an integral part of ISIS’ terror and atrocity apparatus, and was armed with an automatic weapon on her patrols. The crimes allegedly committed by the morality police include major human rights offenses, including support to ISIS’ slave trade of Yezidis.
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