JINHA

ANKARA – With nearly 300 people killed in the extralegal curfews implemented in the Kurdish region in recent months, union workers attempting to help citizens continue to be killed. Gülistan Atasoy, women’s secretary for labor union confederation KESK, noted that while the state once disappeared union activists in the region, now it openly assassinates them.

Countless people have been killed and thousands forced to abandon their homes in the extralegal blockades and curfews in Kurdistan over recent months. Women’s bodies have been exposed or abandoned in the streets for days. Meanwhile, union members in the region—once the target of forced disappearances—are now being slaughtered. Union activist Gülistan Atasoy, women’s secretary for the union confederation KESK, commented on the situation.

“They want to stop the voice of society,” said Gülistan. She referred to the October 10 bombing that targeted the Labor, Peace and Democracy rally in Ankara organized by unions and other civil society organizations for peace in Kurdistan, in which many were slaughtered.

Gülistan said that women have the most responsibility for organizing for peace. She noted that women and children have also been targeted in the attacks in a period, with the areas where they live being completely razed and destroyed. In the attacks, public services have been prevented. Instead, the state has turned schools and hospitals into military operations centers.

“Despite the risk of being targeted, our friends fulfill their duties as humans even more than as healthcare workers and try to intervene for the wounded, and these friends, like our comrades Eyüp, Şeyhmus and Aziz, are being massacred,” said Gülistan, commenting on the killings of healthcare workers in the region. She referred to the killing of Aziz Yural, a healthcare worker and member of the union SES who was killed in the city of Cizre. “Our friend Aziz Yural was especially picked out and killed while trying to help an injured woman in the neighborhood.

“In the 1990s our friends involved in union activity in this region were disappeared in ‘unknown perpetrator’ killings. Now, the state is killing them with snipers, in assassinations that the security forces admit to and claim,” said Gülistan.

(he/sy/fk/cm)