https://anfenglish.com/women/tjk-e-starts-100-reasons-for-the-trial-of-the-dictator-campaign-48007
The Kurdish Women’s Movement in Europe (TJK-E) released a statement providing information about the campaign they will launch on of November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
“We demand that femicide be officially recognized as a crime against humanity at the international level. In the first phase of our ‘100 Reasons for the Judgment of the Dictator’ campaign, which will start on November 25, 2020 and continue until March 8, 2021, we will share with you the stories of the murdered women, saying that we have a new reason for each day.
Women, the main source of social history and laborer of collective sociality, have both resisted for change and freedom and faced all kinds of attacks of sexist militarist male domination in every moment of social rupture that took place in favor of male dominated powers. The body, identity, personality, labor and freedom of women who have been murdered for thousands of years are facing even more serious attacks today. It is as if male-dominated colonial individualism and female emancipatory sociality have become the main contradiction of the 21st century. The medieval darkness rebuilt itself as capitalist modernity in the most brutal way through the rejection of sociality, and it did this mostly by committing femicide and legitimizing genderism.
Since the capitalist modernity system came into existence basing upon the rejection of free-willed and struggling women, it has a great anger and hostility against the women’s revolt and struggle for freedom and solidarity. The patriarchal system, which suppresses and silences the freedom and social leadership role of women through the policies of femicide, is now concerned and angered by the women’s rising demand for freedom.
WOMEN IN UNINTERRUPTED ACTION
For a free, equal, fair life to be lived in trust and ecological balance; women are in an uninterrupted action of resistance against sexist capitalist colonial system, from Kurdistan to Chile, from Poland to Sudan, from Iran to the United States, from India, to Europe and Turkey. they are demanding accountability against domination, harassment, rape, femicide and violation of rights over women’s body and will. All over the world, right-wing totalitarian, fascist, conservative, sexist governments and country leaders target women’s struggles and gains through sexist rhetoric and policies.
Femicide, kidnapping, enslavement, torture, rape in Syria, Shengal, Rojava and other parts of the Middle East are the biggest crimes against humanity in the 21st century committed by ISIS with the help of its supporter and accomplice, Turkey and other indirect supporters. The Turkish AKP-MHP fascist regime’s attacks against targeting women in Kurdistan have become more open and constant with the threats of withdrawal from Istanbul Convention, the requirements of which it has not fulfilled in recent years. With its discourse and politics, the AKP-MHP fascist regime declared that it not only incites violence against women within the society and the family but also targets women directly with its militarist, paramilitary reactionary male power. Erdogan’s government has the main responsibility for crimes against humanity committed against women, which have become a state policy.
Throughout Turkey and Kurdistan women are subject to rape or violence or murdered. Women, children and families are targeted, and extra-judicial executions are carried out in the villages of Şırnak, Cizre, Silopi, İdil, Nusaybin, Sur, Afrin, Serêkaniyê, Girê Spî, Kobanê, Maxmur, Shengal and Southern Kurdistan. Most of these massacres were carried out by armed drones used for military purposes. The incidents of police violence, torture, harassment, death threats and abductions used in arrests during women’s protest actions prove that a special war policy is being applied against women. Tens of thousands of women have been purged from the political sphere, public struggle and profession and imprisoned because of their thoughts. It is not enough to criticize these crimes against women and to protest on the streets, it is time to judge these crimes against women at the international level and to bring the advocates of this fascist regime to account for the systematic murder of women.
While developing self-organization, self-defense and freedom together on the global level through resistance and solidarity, an important goal and justification of our women’s struggle must be to expose, to judge and to condemn on a global level those who attack women’s body, personality, will and labor.
ERDOĞAN IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMES AGAINST SOCIETY
We know that Erdogan’s sexist political discourse, instructions and decrees are directly responsible for the crimes committed against the society targeting mainly women and children in Turkey, Kurdistan, Rojava – North East Syria, Southern Kurdistan, Shengal and Maxmur. Therefore, we believe that Erdogan must be brought to justice, as required by international law, for the crimes of directly targeting and murdering, torturing and detaining women and children, depriving them of their liberty and rape.
According to the definition of the United Nations, genocide is the extermination of individuals of communities or societies that can be distinguished from others by race, species, political view, religion, social status or any other distinctive feature, within the framework of a plan and by a special intent, in the interests of the destroyers. The generally accepted definition of dictatorship is that a ruler holds all the powers and positions himself as an absolute leader at the highest level.
These definitions, which are recognised according to international legal norms, provide sufficient grounds for us to define Erdogan as a dictator and to make sure that he stands trial for the genocides he committed. This dictator disguised as the president of Turkey massacres Kurdish women in a planned and deliberate intention, bearing a male dominated, fascist and racist mentality. Erdogan is the main perpetrator of many massacres, murders and rape against women, consciously and deliberately, throughout the 18-year AKP rule. It is a shame in terms of world human history and justice that international law remains a spectator to the massacres, murders, rape and violence committed by Dictator Erdogan including imprisonment of thousands of politicians, academics, journalists and activists during his rule. It is also a complicity to crime. At this very point, international legal institutions should remove all obstacles to the trial of a dictator, make the necessary legal changes, redefine themselves in line with the purpose of their establishment, and acquit themselves in the eyes of women and peoples.
SAKINE CANSIZ, FIDAN DOĞAN, LEYLA ŞAYLEMEZ, MOTHER TAYBET, CEYLAN ÖNKOL …
Terrible things happened and continue to happen such as the murder of Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan, Leyla Şaylemez on January 9, 2013 in Paris, Taybet İnan, whose body was left on the street for 7 days after being murdered in Silopi in December 2015, extrajudicial execution of female activists Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayır and Fatma Uyar in Silopi on January 4, 2016, the murder of Hevrin Xelef in Serêkaniyê on October 12, 2019, the killing of 12-year-old Ceylan Önkol by a mortar shell fired from the military post on October 29, 2009, the killing of Kader Ortakaya, who was shot in the head while trying to cross into Kobanê on 7 November 2014, the murder of Dilek Doğan in her home on October 18, 2015, the killing of Ekin Van, Mother Taybet, the women who were kidnapped and massacred in Afrin, and the killing of three Kurdish women who were members of the Kongreya Star in the Halinja village of Kobanê this year.
WOMEN ARE SYSTEMATICALLY KILLED IN THE DICTATOR’S COUNTRY
In the dictator’s country, women are systematically murdered every day. We can add increasing violence against women, rapes, exclusion of women from politics or their imprisonment, dismissal of women from academic, artistic and professional fields through investigations, arrests and social lynching to this list of crimes. We want that Erdogan be brought to justice today, not that he be called a ‘state leader’ while he is alive or a ‘dictator’ once his war crimes are exposed.
As the Kurdish Women’s Movement in Europe (TJK-E), we have continued our struggle against femicide in our country with the campaigns, protests and resistances we have carried out so far. With our ‘100 Reasons for the Trial of the Dictator’ campaign, we will confront Erdogan, the main perpetrator of the femicides. Undoubtedly, Erdogan has committed not 100 but hundreds of crimes during his 18-year rule and continues to do so. However, we, as women, will first confront him over the events that have taken a place in the minds of humanity as a shame and that will not allow consciences to be relieved unless the main perpetrator is judged. At the same time, we will demand that femicide be defined as genocide, especially from the UN.
WE WANT AKP TRIED AND JUSTICE RESTORED
Indeed, the UN’s failure to do its part has encouraged dictators like Erdogan, who are the institutional representative of the male-dominated mentality, and thousands of women were massacred for this reason. With this campaign, we want to scrutinize and make visible AKP policies of femicide. We want to be a voice to all women and expose the crimes committed to the world. We want to prevent violence against women in Turkey, where at least one woman is killed by men every day. With this campaign, we demand that the AKP be tried and that justice be ensured. We demand that femicide be officially recognized at the international level as a crime against humanity.
In the first phase of our ‘100 Reasons for the Trial of the Dictator’ campaign, which will start on November 25, 2020, and continue until March 8, 2021 we will share with you the stories of the murdered women, saying that we have a new reason for each day. We will be the voice of the murdered women against the dictator who gives rise to a massacre every single day so that these remain indelible in the pages of history and in the memory of humanity. In addition to the social, political, legal and operational activities for the trial of the dictator, we will collect 100,000 signatures for the 100 reasons we have presented against the massacres committed by the dictator with the legal, military and police power through the institutions under his control and by the gangs he recruited. While every work to be done within the framework of the campaign will bring dictator one step closer to be judged, every voice that rises with every action will narrow the living spaces for the dictator(s).
As TJK-E, we welcome November 25, 2020 with the motto “Defense of Free Society Against Femicide”. On this basis, we will be on the streets and in action wherever we are organized.
Right, we women defend free society and free woman against femicide. The fact that femicide is still not considered a crime against humanity brings with it that the states and dictators who are trying to survive through the policies of femicide do not fear being tried for this crime. Unless femicide is recognized as a crime against humanity, there cannot be a convincing and effective struggle against deadly policies such as genocide. On this basis, we invite everyone to join our actions to mark November 25 and our ‘100 Reasons for the Trial of the Dictator’ campaign.”
