WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #337 - Antipatriarchy, Kurdistan: Pioneers of a Feminist Revolutionary Uprising (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

 September 14, 2022, the day of the assassination of Jina (Mahsa) Amini, marked

the beginning of a revolutionary period in Iran. As the protest continues,
Somayeh Rostampour, a doctoral student at Paris-8 University, returns for
Alternative Libertaire to the origins of the movement and its deeply feminist and
intersectional orientation. ---- Jina (Mahsa) Amini, a 22-year-old young woman of
Kurdish origin, killed by the morality police for "indecent dress",
simultaneously crystallized several oppressions in her identity. As such, the
recent uprising was distinguished from previous ones by an intersection of class,
ethnicity and gender. Her funeral turned into a public protest demonstration with
the slogan "Woman, life, freedom", inspired by the struggle of Kurdish women in
Rojava. He was chanted for the first time that day by the angry residents of
Saqqez, his hometown in Kurdistan, who came bravely on that historic morning to
thwart the government's plan to secretly bury Jina.

This slogan is the legacy of the Kurdish women's movement of Turkey, a region
known to Kurds as Bakur, strongly influenced by the political philosophy proposed
by the founder and charismatic leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
Abdullah Öcalan . Since 2013, this slogan has been reused in Rojava and then in
other regions of Kurdistan and even in many cities in Latin America, Europe and
the United States. Pro-PKK women (both guerrillas and civil political activists)
were the subjects who gradually made "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi" the most central slogan
of this movement by bringing an intersectional vision: both against the
government but also against the local capitalist patriarchy and even their
organization. It also makes it easier for the slogan to travel across borders.

"Woman, life, freedom". Since 2013, this slogan has been reused in Rojava and
then in other regions of Kurdistan and even in many cities in Latin America,
Europe and the United States.
Herzi Pinki
AN INTERSECTIONAL UPRISING
In direct contrast to the murderous and repressive male-dominated structure of
the Islamic Republic, which denied any form of freedom to various groups,
especially women and queers, ethnic or environmental activists, or other
marginalized groups like the workers, "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi" acts as a unifying
alternative that encompasses plural oppressions. Iranian society has been slow to
accept that gender and ethnic oppression is not only the problem of those
concerned, but an absolute necessity for a democracy based on social justice
throughout the country. Getting rid of class oppression is deeply dependent on
the simultaneous resolution of other forms of oppression that have made some
people, including the Kurds, "minority" or even "inferior". The revolutionary
uprising of Jina was able to make these fractions visible and thus make them a
main subject: the marginalized peripheries become the center of the uprising.

It should not be forgotten that for years left-wing forces in Iran not only
ignored the "Kurdish question" and more broadly the demands of national
minorities for the right to self-determination, but they also denied the
importance of feminism or the need to make it a priority. At the same time,
Kurdish nationalists have also tried to fuel the myth that patriarchy does not
exist in Kurdistan, and that if there is violence, it is mostly rooted in state
oppression. central colonialist, who denies the existence of the Kurds. It is
indeed the intersectional aspect of the recent uprising that changes the dominant
masculinist discourse in favor of a feminist narrative.

CROSS-BORDER REALITIES
On this point also, there are similarities between the situation of Iran and that
of Turkey, also provoking revolts in both cases: daily life and private spaces
under the control of the oppressive patriarchal ruler are in crisis in the form
of a permanent state of emergency and women are the pioneers of change because
they are the first victims. It is therefore possible to trace the struggles of
Kurdish women across borders. It was state authoritarianism in particular that
created a similar socio-political condition for Kurds in two countries. With the
establishment of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the attempt to
Islamize gender-related fields, this similarity has increased day by day.

A LONG-STANDING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
 From the beginning of the revolutionary uprising in Iran, Kurdish women played a
very important role. They paid the price: at least five Kurdish women were killed
by the oppressive forces of the regime, hundreds injured and arrested. These
resistances and the magnificent performance of Kurdish women on the day of Jina's
funeral in Kurdistan (starting point of the uprising) by waving their headscarves
and transforming the symbol of state oppression into a flag of feminist struggle
are in the same way the result of an organizational tradition in Rojhelat
(Kurdistan located in Iran), transmitted from generation to generation despite
brutal repression. The seeds of the struggle for emancipation that were planted
in 1979, in a process that has remained unfinished, have germinated today four
decades later in Kurdistan and have benefited the whole of Iran.

Consequences of politico-economic marginalization, in Iran as in Turkey, the acts
of national oppression by the central government on the Kurdish people have led
to collective reactions in the form of various movements with a hegemony of
Kurdish nationalists and socialists. In both cases, the militancy of these
organized forces, which notably emerged in the power vacuum and political
openness caused by the fall of the Pahlavi regime in 1979, paved the way for the
active presence of Kurdish women in politics. Some movements, like the Komala
Maoist Party (1979-1991), although in a small but pioneering way, also provided a
platform for Rojhelat women to enter the political or armed fields (even before
the PKK) .

And, during the demonstration of March 8, 1979, several thousand women in
Sanandaj, Marivan or Kermanshah protested against compulsory hijab with slogans
like "No headscarf, no humiliation, death to dictatorship", "We did not make a
revolution to go back". The nucleus responsible for the successful preparation of
this demonstration created soon after, at the beginning of the year 1980, the
Council of Women of Sanandaj whose members were mainly drawn from various
tendencies of the left. These activities laid the foundation for the progressive
and radical tradition of March 8 in Rojhelat, which continues to this day
continuously and in different forms.

Historically, men have been the main actors in Kurdish nationalist movements
according to a patriarchal vision according to which the fatherland was
considered as a woman whom men had to protect as their property. But, with the
growth of radical and socialist movements in Kurdistan, and, in particular,
during the last two or three decades, this discourse has been gradually
marginalized and replaced by egalitarian and progressive ideas. This new
political position is built at the heart of several intersectional fields of
oppression and exploitation that women face: with the patriarchy of Kurdish and
non-Kurdish men, fundamentalism and the structural oppression imposed by the
regime in place, Iranian chauvinists and centrist (often nationalist) feminism,
as well as homophobia and racism. Thanks to these efforts, women have become one
of the main pillars of the struggle and resistance of the revolutionary movement
of Kurdistan as evidenced by the Jina uprising.

Somayeh Rostampour

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Kurdistan-Pionnieres-d-un-soulevement-revolutionnaire-feministe
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