Rojbin Ekin/JINHA

SILÊMANÎ – In Southern Kurdistan, women activists are facing death threats trying to silence them and push them out of politics. Hundreds of women, organizing to denounce the threat of violence, have released a statement saying they will not be intimidated.

In Southern Kurdistan (the Federal Kurdistan Region of Iraq), women activists and academics have faced death threats for their activism, with social media used to identify and target them. On January 14, women gathered at the Hotel Perej in the city of Sulaymaniyah to state that they would not be intimidated by the alarming attacks. 300 women academics, politicians, activists and intellectuals signed a statement denouncing the insults and violence against women that manifested through threats against them.

Berivan Muhamed, a women’s rights activist and a member of the board of directors of the Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Movement (REJAK), said that the attacks have targeted women with careers in academia and politics.

“The goal of these attacks is to distance women from struggle and to silence them,” said Berivan. She noted that the targeting of women stemmed from the patriarchal nature of society and the ruling power in Southern Kurdistan, which aimed to enclose women in the home.

Berivan said that the courts and laws set up for women in the Federal Kurdistan Region had no reality on the ground, since they were set up and controlled by a deeply patriarchal government. As a result, women could have no expectations of a solution to their problems in the court or the Parliament.

Kewestan Muhamed, a former Parliamentary representative with the Goran movement, is among the women receiving death threats. She was threatened with death by an official high up in the Kurdistan region government, and noted that other women have been pushed out of politics by practices like sharing naked videos of them online.

“Regardless of whether there are certain laws regarding women, these laws have still not been put into operation. It puts the Kurdistan region to shame that women politicians are insulted, threatened and exposed to violence. Women are treated in a very nasty way. This is a fascist attack.”

Kewestan and Berivan said that they would not give up on, but would escalate their struggle for equality and democracy.

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