Hanna Bohman
Hanna Bohman is a Canadian former model who decided to travel to Syria to become a fighter with the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ).
She decided to join the Kurdish forces in Syria after watching a propaganda video of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) featuring Canadian John Maguire.[1][2] He had gone to fight for the militant group and appeared in propaganda videos to incite Canadians to launch attacks in their own country.[3] Bohman told Vice that she also wanted to do something useful with her life after surviving a near fatal motorcycle accident. She told them that "I had wasted so much of my life trying to make a living, that I hadn't actually started to live. Fighting the Satanic State and being part of the revolution in Rojava is a dream come true. Not that I dreamed of killing people, but that I am now truly useful."[4]
A former model with A.B.C., she told the channel CTV Vancouver that "I needed to do something with my life. I was bored. I didn't feel like I had done anything that I felt was really important". She was smuggled into the country and decided to join the YPJ because she felt they were fighting for women's rights in the region.[5]
Bohman's nom de guerre is Tiger Sun. She worked for a defensive unit of the YPJ in 2015 before returning to Canada after suffering from malnutrition. But she soon decided to return to Rojava.[6]
Bohman took part in the battle of Tel Abyad, Tel Tamir and Suluk in 2015.[2]
In an interview of June 2017, she told the BBC that her intention was to help fight for women's rights in the Middle East.[7] In 2017, a documentary called Fear Us Women[8] was released telling the story of her experiences with the YPJ.[9]
References[edit]
- ^ "The Canadian model fighting ISIS in Syria tells us that they're easier to defeat than you'd think". Business Insider. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
- ^ a b "Canadian fighting ISIS shares harsh realities of war". National Observer. 2016-01-14. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
- ^ "John Maguire, Ottawa man fighting for ISIS, urges attacks on Canadian targets in video". CBC. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
- ^ "We Spoke to the Former Model Who Joined the Kurdish Fight Against ISIS". Vice (in Swedish). 2015-10-29. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ "'This is where I want to be': Canadian woman on fighting ISIS in Syria". CTVNews. 2017-04-23. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
- ^ Smith, Allan. "The Canadian model fighting ISIS in Syria tells us that they're easier to defeat than you'd think". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ^ "The ex-model fighting IS". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
- ^ "Fear Us Women - Official Film Site". Fear Us Women. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ^ O'Malley, Katie (2017-12-20). "Meet The Canadian Who Fights ISIS Alongside 10,000 Women". ELLE. Retrieved 2020-05-02.