Dear friends,
I send you warm greetings from Rojava, the heart of the women’s revolution, the heart of the global struggle for humanity and socialist values. The attacks on Rojava, on the revolution and its values, continue.
The humanitarian catastrophe of the siege of Kobani, with hundreds of thousands trapped inside, is being perpetrated by Turkish proxy militias together with mercenaries from HTS and IS. Medical care is a major problem (dialysis and the children’s hospital are on the verge of closing), as are the supply of fuel, food, electricity, and water.
The night between the 28th to 29th, there were attacks on the small town of Til Temir, which is is home to many Assyrian Christians. A Christian church was destroyed. The attacks on religious and ethnic minorities by HTS once again reveal their true jihadist nature.
I want to quote Hv Remziye Mohammed from TEV-DEM, an institution for society organizing, about the aim of the attacks: “Kurds are being targeted today because they are Kurds, and because they chose to defend their identity, pursue coexistence, and build a political model that recognizes national and religious pluralism.” She believes that the primary objective of these wars and escalations is “to sow discord and hatred among components, especially between Kurds and Arabs, and to prevent them from reaching consensus within a unified political and social framework. This ultimately aims to strike the Democratic Nation project at its roots and reproduce internal conflicts. The revolution of North and East Syria, launched fourteen years ago, was built on the will and unity of the people and on a genuine partnership with protection forces. The people who established this experience are capable of protecting it today, if they remain committed to unity and the message of peace.
“Just as Kobani was liberated from ISIS terrorism, Rojava is capable of liberating itself from all mercenary forces seeking to destroy the Democratic Nation project and undermine unity among components. The will of peoples will always remain stronger than weapons and destruction.”
The last few days have been rainy, or even snowy, but in cities like Hesekê, Qamişlo, and Dêrik, the guard groups remain present day and night to ensure street safety. The rotation and distribution of personnel is organized by the neighborhood commune, and it is young people, women, the elderly, and others who, full of responsibility and solidarity, are determined to protect the achievements of their revolution. Women are heavily involved everywhere and take the lead with great responsibility, both in guard duty and in providing for refugees, healthcare, and so on.
It is the role of women to continually give this profound meaning to the resistance. That it is about freedom, about values, and that in defending the women’s revolution, the values of the Rojava Revolution, there can only be one victory.
A snowstorm in Syria has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, hitting refugees in camps particularly hard. Snowstorms in Syria are not normal, by the way, and have intensified this year. It is a clear sign of climate change and makes it clear, like everything these days, that change is urgently needed. A change in our relationship to nature, to life, to humanity, and the building of structures for democracy, women’s liberation, and ecology, as they are currently being defended in Rojava.
I wanted to say something about the violence of the attacks. You have surely seen the videos in which HTS soldiers film themselves torturing, murdering, destroying, imprisoning, and mutilating the bodies of the murdered, especially women. These videos cause a lot of pain here, and probably for you too. More and more dossiers are appearing online, compiling evidence of human rights violations. I want to encourage you to participate, to send this evidence, categorized, to journalists and spread the word. These videos also repeatedly spark discussions:
What kind of understanding of life, of humanity, is it that someone commits such atrocities and films themselves doing it? And what understanding of life are we defending?
A few days ago, a video circulated showing a child violently cutting of the head of a teddy bear while being egged on, with an ISIS flag in the backgound. The video caused a lot of pain for the women around me, even though, unlike other videos, there was no blood, no desecration of the dead bodies of friends. I’ve thought about this a lot because this – a child of ISIS – so clearly demonstrates the cruelty of this completely dehumanizing ideology. I wanted to share this with you. In this context, I can also say that it’s always very important to people here to emphasize that ISIS is not representing Islam, but rather uses it for its own fascist and patriarchal interests.
There is a Call from the Film Commune placed in Rojava to international filmmakers, artists, festivals, and platforms to use their reach.
Saying:
“If we don’t tell our truth, the lies of others will become history.”
and further: “Their goal is not only physical annihilation. They are also concerned with the extinction of life itself, its culture, its language, its hope.”
I want to build on this call; I believe it’s important to use art and culture to draw attention to what is being defended here: true values of beauty, as we define beauty, namely inextricably linked to ethics and life, as well as to the struggle.
We want to call you to be creative in your actions of defense, using arts and culture. To be angry and to dance and sing, to write poems and songs from the bottom of your hearts, to paint and film, and to share all of this with the world, seeing yourselves as defenders of beauty as well as truth.
Students from the Institute of Fine Arts in Çemçemal, Basur/Iraq, have created a five-meter-long sculpture of a braided hair plait to draw attention to the attacks and resistance of the women’s revolution. They say: “I can say that braided hair in Kurdish culture is not just an ordinary adornment. On the contrary, from the past to the present, Kurdish women wear it as a symbol of dignity and beauty. When they prepared for war, they braided their hair and threw it behind them.”
So, as always, this message is not just an update, but also a call to action.
Let’s defend our revolution!
Greetings from Rojava
