In post-Assad Syria’s chaos, Alawite women face sexual violence – Winnipeg Free Press

LATAKIA, Syria (AP) — The woman, a member of Syria ‘s Alawite religious minority, was walking home on a sunny July day in her town on the Mediterranean coast when three gunmen stopped her and pulled her into their van. It was the start of a week of torment.

They drove her to a town in northern Syria three hours away, where they locked her in a room in an abandoned building. Over the coming days she was raped twice, she told The Associated Press.

“You Alawite women were born to be our sabaya,” she said one of the rapists told her, using an Arabic term common among Sunni Muslim extremists for women taken in war as sex slaves. The woman, in her mid-30s, gave her account on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago, dozen