2006 Press Statement – Kurdish
FEMINIST STRUGGLE AGAINST MALE DOMINATION, THE STATE, MILITARISM AND CAPITALISM
Rebellion Liberates!
Women, Towards Liberation;
Today millions of women whose names we have never known, whose faces we have never seen, turn their faces towards the sun across the world; their languages are different, but their spirits shout the same slogans together… Today is March 8… Long live women’s liberation struggle…
Our rebellion;
Is against those who disregard our history, who try to make it forgotten
Is against those who want to break our spirit of struggle and solidarity
Is against those who reckon the future can be built without us
Is against those who think the future can be built without rejecting all oppression, exploitation and relations of power.
History is the history of our oppression as women… and it is the history male domination has written according to its own interests, so that we women do not awaken and rise up…
We learned from those who wrote the history of women’s freedom through the prices they paid how to say “WE EXIST!” to those who deny us… From the Fouriers, Olympes, suffragettes, Kollontais, Clara Zetkins, Emma Goldmans…
Once again we stand by those burned on accusations of witchcraft, sent to the guillotine for demanding the right to vote, killed for demanding bread and roses, excluded for not wanting a revolution in which they could not dance, living in prison in the country where they made the revolution, and confined to psychiatric hospitals for opposing those in power…
Exactly 150 years after the burning of the working women who created March 8 in 1857, women workers are still burning…
Because we have said let no more people die, let night shifts be abolished,
Because our labor in workplaces is seen as cheap labor and we are made to work without security, insurance or unions,
Because we face a sexist division of labor and sexist practices,
Because our labor at home is appropriated in the name of contributing to the family budget,
To make our neglected domestic labor visible,
Because we say no to state violence and war,
To expose harassment and rape by village guards, soldiers and police,
Because we resist militarist, occupying war policies based on dying and killing, and we have never been and will never be agents of those policies,
Because we want all the wounds of women harmed by war and migration to be healed,
To stand against racist and extermination policies directed at Kurds,
Because we say no to disregarding Kurdish women’s language and culture,
Because we say “No!” to a uniform and obedient society,
Because we say “No!” to a heterosexist society that disregards different sexual identities,
Because we say “No!” to harassment, rape and violence within the home,
Because, even though we do not want to be anyone’s honour, we are killed by men in the name of honour,
Because we say “No!” to sexual abuse within the family,
Because we say “No!” to co-wife arrangements and exchange marriages,
Because we say “No!” to the killings of women committed under the guise of suicide,
Because we say “No!” to male domination, militarism and capitalism,
Together! And stronger! We say “Long Live Feminist Rebellion”…
Because we know this world will not change until we change it…
We will not let them count our dreams, our hopes, our right to live in another world as nothing… We will claim our labor, bodies and identities…
We will not obey!
We will change it!