Women in Van march against violence

2015-04-14 10:19:47

VAN (DİHA) – Women shut down traffic in the Northern Kurdish city of Van yesterday in a march that took place as part of their month-long campaign against violence against women in the province.

The crowd of around a thousand women changed their route to evade the barricade police set up to stop the march, whose slogan was "speak up for your own life." In a province where femicide, violence against women and women's suicides have spiraled out of control with no intervention from the state, women launched a campaign on April 1 to raise consciousness against violence against women. The campaign will last until May 10.

The march started at the city's central FeqiyêTeyran Park, where after an hour-long argument police denied the women position to march. Finally, the women, accompanied by politicians from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and Party of Democratic Regions (DBP), took to the streets in a colorful march. Many were wearing regional Kurdish clothes and carrying posters of women slain in resistance-from Kobanê fighters to Özgecan Aslan.

"Bring on the father, bring on the husband, bring on the state, bring on the cops, bring on the nightsticks, rebellion in defiance, freedom in defiance," went the chant as the women wound through the streets. Sociologist Alev Şahin, of the Rojîn Women's Life Center, spoke briefly when the march stopped.

She stressed that women, by fighting against the patriarchal system, had disproved the perception that they were "powerless creatures." 

(cm/nt)