JINHA

MÊRDÎN – JINHA journalist Zehra Doğan, known for portraying the pains and struggles she witnessed in her paintings as much as with her news coverage, has sent a letter from prison. Zehra said in her letter that she could continue to draw.

For five months, our agency’s editor Zehra Doğan has been reporting from the Nusaybin district of Mardin province. The day she left the district, Zehra was arrested by police and imprisoned pending trial. Now, Zehra has sent a letter from Mardin E-Type Prison, where she is being held. With her news coverage and her paintings from besieged cities like Cizre, Derik, Dargeçit, and Nusaybin, Zehra portrayed women trying to retrieve their children under white flags; burned and destroyed cities; the laments of women; and the struggle in the cities. The evidence against Zehra in the case includes not only her news coverage, but also her paintings.

Zehra’s message from prison is as follows:

“I always tried to exist through my paintings, my news, and my struggle as a woman. Now, although I’m trapped between four walls, I still think that I have absolutely done my duty in full. In this country, dark as night, where all of our rights have been scratched out with the red of blood, I already knew that I would be imprisoned. I want to repeat Picasso’s teaching: do you really think that a painter is just someone who uses her brush to paint bugs and flowers? No artist turns her back on society; a painter needs to use her paintbrush as a weapon against oppressors. Not even the Nazi soldiers tried Picasso because of his paintings, and yet I am on trial because of my drawings. I will continue to draw. When a woman takes up that riot of colors, she can make a prison out of brushstrokes. But they’re just brushstrokes…. Don’t forget, it’s my hand that holds the paintbrush!”

(mm/gc/cm)