JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Across Kurdistan and Turkey, women held demonstrations and actions to condemn the killings of Kurdish women. The actions remembered not only the three Kurdish women politicians killed on January 9, 2013 in Paris, but the three Kurdish women killed in the police-besieged town of Silopi on Monday evening.

On January 9, 2013, three Kurdish women politicians—Sakine Cansız, Leyla Şaylemez and Fidan Doğan—were murdered in the heart of Paris. Almost three years to the day later, Turkish state forces killed three Kurdish women—Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir and Fatma Uyar—in the besieged town of Silopi, in the Botan region of Kurdistan. At actions to condemn the killings today, women bore banners carrying Pakize Nayir’s famous words: “if Botan is victorious, all humanity will be.”

In the town of Yüksekova in Hakkari province, the district organizations of the parties HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) and DBP (Democratic Regions’ Party) held a press conference. Ruken Sakar, district co-chair of the DBP, noted that Turkish President Erdoğan has previously stated, “be it a child or a woman, what is necessary will be done” and recently gave the order “use weapons against civilians.”

“Those who targeted the women’s liberation movement on January 9th in Paris are today displaying their hatred of women with the assassinations and massacres in Cizre, Kerboran, Gever, Sur, Nusaybin and Silopi,” said Ruken.

The women’s organization KJA organized a press conference in the town of Çınar in Diyarbakır province to condemn the killing. In the city of Antep, women held a march to condemn the killings, while in Adana, KJA women held a press conference. Meanwhile, the Mardin organization of the HDP made a statement from the town of Midyat, where they had traveled on their way to receive the three women’s bodies. However, the women’s families announced that they would not receive the bodies today because of the ongoing attacks in Kurdistan.

(ekip/fk/cm)