We, as women of Western Kurdistan and as women who struggle, write this statement in response to the call of our indigenous sisters and brothers in Mexico in the face of the attacks that indigenous communities are receiving from paramilitary groups and the impunity they enjoy due to the inaction of the Mexican State.
These attacks hurt us as if they were also on us, because we recognize ourselves in all of the facts that the comrades explain. Attacks on those who are resisting and building a new world are constant, whether they come from the state, paramilitary groups or mercenaries. These attacks are directed against the indigenous peoples, who fight against mega-projects to plunder their land, who organise themselves in a grassroots democratic way, who fight for a gender just and ecological society, who oppose capitalist globalisation. The patriarchal system, which in this case is represented by the Mexican State, is responsible for the attacks on the Zapatista communities, as well as for the disappearances, killings and rapes of children and young women. It is the same system that is causing a demographic shift in Afrin, which is leading to the abduction, rape and murder of young women every day by the Turkish occupation.
These are alternative projects that prove that another world is possible beyond capitalist and patriarchal nation states, and so they are attacked and criminalised by nation states. Just as in Chiapas where the indigenous population is attacked, so here in Northern and Eastern Syria the indigenous population is attacked, murdered and displaced.
The war of counter-insurgency that is being fought against the EZLN is not different either from the war of discrediting and delegitimising that is being carried out against the YPG, YPJ or SDF, our self-defence forces. It is not different the silence of the states all over the world, which endorses all this violence and shows their complicity with these crimes, which are useful to their interests of domination and exploitation of both people and territories. The fact that these groups do not have a direct link with the state does not exempt them from its responsibility in relation to these crimes.
However, all this will not lead us to surrender but instead will strengthen our resistance, because it reaffirms that a free life, especially for women, is not possible in the prevailing patriarchal system and that only through self-organisation and self-defence of communities and peoples and internationalist solidarity will it be possible to live freely and in harmony with other peoples and with nature.
For all these reasons, we condemn the attacks carried out by paramilitary groups on indigenous communities and members of the Zapatista community and the National Indigenous Council, and we demand that the Mexican government recognize the existence of these armed groups and attend to the demands of the communities in Chiapas.
We send all our solidarity, strength and love to the indigenous and Zapatista communities, who are an example of dignity and courage, who prove that a new world is possible, and also to all the women in Mexico who are waging a historic struggle against femicide.
Even if we are far away we tell you again that your struggle is our struggle, just as our revolution is also your revolution.
The struggle goes on because resistance is life.
Jin, Jiyan, Azadi – Woman, Life and Freedom
Kongra Star
September 13th, 2020
