Rojava refugee femicide victim laid to rest
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - Although they did not know her name, Kurdish women activists held a funeral yesterday for a young woman refugee from Rojava who was killed for refusing an arranged marriage.
On May 1, the bullet-riddled body of a young woman was found in the village of Işıkkaya in Mardin province. For 28 days, her body remained in the state hospital in the nearby city of Diyarbakır. No one came to inquire about her. Eventually, authorities learned that the young woman had fled from Rojava when Daesh gangs attacked. She had relocated to a tent city in Turkey. There, when she rejected her family's attempt to force her to marry, she fled. She was killed three days later.
A large crowd of women, called by the Congress of Free Women (KJA), showed up yesterday in Diyarbakır to bury the young woman in a common grave—although none of them knew her name. The women chanted the Kurdish women's movement slogan "Jin, jiyan, azadî" as they bore the femicide victim to her grave and threw earth over her plain wooden coffin.
"For us, every woman killed is ideological and this is not an ideology we accept," said Democratic Regions Party (DBP) provincial co-chair Hafize İpek, who was among the many local politicians who came to the ceremony. Women at the ceremony condemned Turkish state policies that leave men free to commit violence against women unimpeded. There have been more than 100 femicides in Turkey in the first half of 2015.
Today at 10:00 a.m., KJA activists will set up a tent for condolences in Dağkapı Square to host mourners for the young woman.
(cm/nt)
