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This is a Yazidi I met in a roasting refugee camp, with his 2 surviving children. He lost 2 daughters (both under the age of 12) to the beds of ISIS rapists, & his 2 elder sons to brainwashers who turned them into killers for the Caliphate. 
His wife was also enslaved. She was shot through the head when she tried to escape. She survived but was left brain-damaged. The owner, via intermediaries, sold her back to her husband. While I spoke to him, I could hear her moaning behind a curtain, beating her head on concrete.
Sinjar fell in 2014. This was a year before Shamima Begum went to join ISIS. She knew full well about the fate of Yazidi girls younger than her, because her recruiter boasted about it, and laughed about their suffering. Yazidi slaves were part of the Caliphate's marketing.
Yes, we should feel compassion for Shamima Begum. But we should also feel compassion for the Yazidis - many of whom were much younger than her. She was knowingly complicit in their suffering. If we simply give her a slap on the wrist, we betray them.
Should we be privileging the misery of a British citizen over the misery of those whose sufferings were infinitely greater, and which she knowingly contributed to? If we do, what kind of message are we sending to other British citizens who may be tempted to do as she did?
ISIS are broken militarily, but not ideologically. There are still plenty of British citizens susceptible to the message that the Yazidis are pagans, and merit enslavement, rape, beheading. Are they not owed compassion? Does Britain not owe them for what our citizens did to them?
Yazidi children are not British, & so do not appear on the front of British newspapers. But they too are trapped in camps - bereaved, raped, traumatised beyond our worst nightmares. We owe them a due of compassion too. We owe it to them to keep them in our thoughts & hearts.
If you would like to help the #Yazidis, then @AMARLondon is a wonderful charity that does great work: amarfoundation.org
