JINHA

ŞIRNEX - In the town of Silopi, where three people have died so far in police violence ongoing for more than a week, the Women's Freedom Assembly has released a report based on its observations.

Starting on August 7, the Kurdish town of Silopi, Turkey (in Şırnak province) has been under a state of police terror. Three have been killed and reports of rape and torture under arrest have emerged from the town. The Women's Freedom Assembly, a group of women politicians and activists, traveled to Silopi to observe conditions on the ground. They visited the neighborhoods under police blockade and spoke with local people and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) representatives.

Assembly member Gülsüm Ağaoğlu compared conditions in Silopi to the worst periods of the 1990s, when Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey) was in a state of emergency and police killed with impunity. She attributed the conditions for the state violence to the Internal Security Law, passed in Turkey in February through the aggressive efforts of the ruling AKP.

Ayşe Gökhan, another assembly member and an activist with the Congress of Free Women (KJA), noted that the people of the region were now organized and would not accept the conditions of the 1990s.

"The Kurdish people are not like they were before, and everyone should be aware of this," said Ayşe. "If here, today, despite the barbarism being forced on them, the people can come into the streets without fear and meet us, this proves that state terror has not achieved its goal. Just as those who dreamed that Kobanê would fall have been disappointed, the game they are trying to play in Şırnak, Cizre and Silopi will be for nothing."

(be-ma/fk/cm)