Kurdish women in Europe to step up organizing
NEWS DESK (DİHA) - Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the PYD, remotely attended the party's Europe conference ofthe women's section today. Speaking to the important gathering of the Kurdish women's movement in Europe, she said that women needed to organize in Europe with the spirit of Kobanê's victory.
Around 100 delegates from the Kurdish European women's movement traveled to Essen for the Rojava political party's European women's section's second annual meeting. Delegates came from Switzerland, Belgium France, Holland and other European countries fort he conference, where they debated the current political situation, delivered action reports and discussed upcoming elections.
Abdullah: European Kurdish women needed to play a stronger role
Asya Abdullah, teleconferencing in, said that Kurdish women in Europe had long been under-organized, but that the last two years had seen them begin to organized. "We are holding this second conference, even with all the inadequacies," she said. She added that European Kurdish women needed to play a stronger role, befitting the extent of the YPJ struggle.
TJK-E: It's vital for women to organize on a level befitting struggle in Rojava
The women at the conference decided to hold more frequent meetings of local women's assemblies, to organize a young women's conference and to hold events honoring YPJ martyrs Silava and Arîn Mîrxan. "The thing controlling us until now was system of the patriarchal and colonialist states," said Leyla Viyan, speaking on behalf of TJK-E (European Kurdish Women's Movement). "But now the Kurdish people and especially women have reached a higher level." She said it was important for women to organize on a level befitting the struggle in Rojava.
Viyan also stressed that it was important for the women not to lose their ties with Kurdistan."We have to act in Europe as if we're a part of the country [Kurdistan]," she said. "We need to form committees and be organized to protect our culture, our identity and language."
Simultaneously, women's assemblies across Europe had their local meetings yesterday. Women gathered in Cologne and Hamburg in Germany; Arnhem in the Netherlands; and Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the discuss activities that can strengthen the struggles in both Rojava, to defend the Rojava revolution, and in Northern Kurdistan, to support the democratic resolution of the Kurdish problem and to help the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) succeed in the June elections. Women also planned training camps at their local congresses.
(cm/nt)
