JINHA

AMED – With celebrations and festivities taking place in every major city and in hundreds of towns in Kurdistan, the region may well have the most celebrations of March 8, International Working Women's Day, of anywhere in the world. Women are taking to the streets of Northern Kurdistan, in Turkey, and Rojava, in Syria, to celebrate women's struggle this year.

International Working Women's Day has been marked since the early 20^th century, in remembrance of massive strikes of women working in the garment industry in New York. It was first proposed as an international holiday by German socialists led by Clara Zetkin.

In Kurdistan, where the slogan "jin, jiyan, azadî" (woman, life, freedom) is key to the Kurdish freedom movement, March 8 is a prominent holiday. Women take to the streets in regional Kurdish clothes for marches, speeches, rallies and traditional dancing in the streets.In the wake of the liberation of Kobanê through the sacrifice of women fighters like Arîn Mîrxan, March 8 has a special significance this year.

March 8 celebrations began as early as February 25 in some regions of Kurdistan. Across the region, women have traveled from workplace to workplace, distributing carnations to working women. They have organized campaigns to send greeting cards and books to the women political prisoners celebrating March 8 behind bars. The cities of Kurdistan are hung with purple and white banners like those in Diyarbakır, hung by the women's division of public workers' union KESK, declaring: "we won't be subjects of the AKP or slaves to capital."

Women have held a number of women-run bazaars to raise funds for the reconstruction of the city of Kobanê and to promote women's work in the run-up to the March 8 season. Art exhibitions of women's painting and screenings of women-oriented films have taken place across the region. Kurdish singer Nuarin has recently released a new song for the March 8 holiday, called "Jin Jiyane" ("Women are Life"), dedicated to Kurdish women who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom.

The recent founding of the Congress of Free Women (KJA by its Kurdish acronym), a transnational decision-making body for the women's movement, marked a new step in the women's movement in Kurdistan and Turkey. The prominent women's organization DÖKH (Democratic Free Women's Movement) has dissolved itself in order to re-organize as the KJA, which will hold general congresses on a yearly basis. This will be KJA's first March 8, and women activists from the newly proclaimed women's group have had a prominent role in organizing the festivities.

(st/fk/cm)