Joyce Haynes

The first meeting of the 2019-2020 Fredonia Shakespeare Club year was held on Oct. 10 at the Edwards Waterhouse Inn. President Lucille Richardson welcomed 15 members.

Priscilla Bernatz read the minutes from the annual picnic held June 20, and from the opening tea held Oct. 3. The minutes were approved as written.

Joyce Haines read her paper “Nobel Peace Prize 2018” which is summarized as follows:

On Oct. 10, 2019, the Fredonia Shakespeare Club started their presentations of this year’s theme, Nobel Prize Winners, with a paper on an Iraqi young woman, Nadia Murad.

Murad was one of the two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 2018. The other recipient was Dr. Denis Mukwege from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both received the prize for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

Nadia Murad has written a book entitled “The Last Girl” about her story of captivity when Isis seized her village of Kocho in Iraq in 2014. Isis killed the men and older women, captured the young children for indoctrination into fighting and converting to Muslim and kidnapped the young girls for sex slaves. The girls were sold at a slave market and were forced to marry their masters and convert to Islam, clean and cook and be repeatedly raped and beaten at the whim of their captors. According to the Isis interpretation of the Koran, the Yazidis were considered infidels since they did not have the same beliefs and the Isis Muslims were justified in treating their abaya (sex slaves) as property to do with them whatever they wanted.

Murad continues her fight to see Isis prosecuted for genocide and see the men who raped her brought to justice. She is an activist speaking out to many nations asking for assistance in bringing justice for how she was treated, helping other girls still in captivity and giving hope to Yazidis living as refugees throughout the world.

More than anything else, she wants to be “the last girl” in the world with a story like hers.

Barbara Albert assisted at the tea table.

The next meeting of the Club will be held at the home of Joan Larson when Mary Jane Walker will read her paper on “Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1923.”