JINHA

MÊRDÎN – For two days, a march of women struggled with police opposition to march into the blockaded Botan region of Kurdistan to protest the attacks on the people there. The women, speaking from the Gercüş district, promised that the march would spread to all the cities of the region.

The women’s organization KJA (Congress of Free Women) began a march of hundreds to enter the besieged Botan region of Kurdistan, in protest of the Turkish state’s denial of the right to bury the bodies of the many killed in the blockades and bloody 24-hour curfews. Women have flooded to Kurdistan from across Turkey, meeting police stops every step of the way. The women recently made a statement in the town of Gercüş.

Yesterday, women found themselves enclosed by armored vehicles at a rest stop near the city of Siirt. The women changed their route and headed to the Güçlükonak district. One group of women managed to force their way through the police blockade and made it to Şırnak province, the heart of the Botan region.

The others changed their route again, heading for the Midyat district. After hours of tension with the police, the women rerouted once more, to Gercüş in Batman province. As women lit a fire, another group headed out for Şırnak, while the remaining women made a statement.

“In two days, we have been denied access to five different cities on the orders of the Ministry of the Interior,” announced Sebahat Tuncel, co-speaker of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK). “Our people have been resisting in Botan for 30 days. Their resistance is not for themselves; it is for us, for you, for the future of our children.

“All we have in our hands is the flag of freedom, while they close off every road with bulletproof vests, snipers, and armored vehicles. We’ve seen how they fear our ululations,” said Sebahat. “This march, by scaring them, has actually reached its goal. After this, this march needs to continue in all cities.”

The Parliamentary representatives among the group headed for Şırnak for the funeral of the 12 people who have been left unburied, while the rest of the women returned.

(gc-ny/fk/cm)