Kendal Breizh – Olivier Le ClainchDate and Place of Birth: 26 October 1977 – Malestroit, Bretagne
Date and Place of Martyrdom: 10 February 2018 – Afrîn
Olivier Le Clainche was born in 1977 in Britanny, a peninsula in the West of the French state where many of the Breton people live. A Celtic language, Breton is spoken there. The French nation-state, in asserting its idea of French identity over the peoples in its territory, forbade the speaking of Breton in schools, with children being punished for speaking their language. For many years, a movement for greater autonomy in the region has existed, with some groups fighting a militant campaign against the French state.
Olivier had strong connections with this movement, but he firmly rejected the narrow ethno-nationalism of many streams of the Breton nationalist movement. As a founding member of the group Huch! and with the Coordination Bretagne Indépendante et Libertaire (Coordination for an Independent and Libertarian Brittany), he published many writings in the journal “le Huchoèr”, articulating a perspective which rejected the bourgeois and assimilationist French state as well as the nation-state model in general.
Olivier was very conscious of the freedom struggles against occupation in other lands, and wrote of the struggles in Ireland and the Basque Country among others. He rejected the view, found within parts of the anarchist movement, that dismissed the national liberation struggles on the European continent. His work also centered on supporting those who faced state repression for their militant actions, opposing the violence of police and military institutions, the courts and the prisons.
“It should be constantly recalled that independence is not freedom…It is the end of an oppression, by the severing of the hierarchical and colonial link, but it maintains a people under the domination of an indigenous state. But independence without the establishment of a really liberating social project for the people, but also for each of the individuals who compose it, does nothing: who would be stupid enough to believe that a Breton boss, by the mere fact of being Breton, will be better than a French boss? To believe that a Breton cop, will be less oppressive than a French cop? To believe that a Breton baton will be softer than a French baton? To think, in fact, that the creation of a Breton state is the solution to all the evils of Brittany? To think of the independence of Brittany…as an end in itself is to lure, and it is to lure the individuals for whom we try to fight, starting with ourselves. It is to place yourself in a situation of being enslaved by a new power, by a new state.”
With this clear ideological perspective, it is no surprise that he found common cause with the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the revolution in Rojava, which attempts to build a movement for the liberation of oppressed peoples outside of the nation-state paradigm.
Joining the Rojava Revolution in the summer of 2017, Olivier sought to defend the revolution and the people of the region from the barbaric attacks of jihadists and fascist states. In Rojava, he was elected by the friends at the Internationalist Academy as the person responsible for security, a position he took with great enthusiasm and dedication. “He took his duties so seriously it was almost a parody,” his comrade recalls. “I mean, the man literally slept on the guard tower instead of a room with air conditioning. […] To him, this was a position he had been selected for by his comrades, and he was not going to let them down. This was a sacred thing for him, and he wasn’t going to risk breaking the trust his friends put in him. Not even for a second.” “There were soldiers who came with 10 years of special forces experience, and we didn’t give them a rifle with a firing pin [in the Academy],” remembers his commander in YPG International. “But we gave it to him. Heval Kendal was an exemplary revolutionary, humble and very intelligent,” he says.
In Rojava he was given the name Kendal, and in the end settled on the second name Breizh, in honour of his homeland. He served at the front line in the campaigns in Raqqa and Deir-Ez-Zour. When the invasion of Afrîn began, he was determined to be part of the resistance. “I went around to everyone to ask them one by one if they wanted to go to Afrîn,” remembers the YPG International commander. “He said to me ‘If you don’t send me to Afrîn, I will go to Afrîn.’
Şehîd Kendal was martyred in Afrîn on 10 February 2018 in clashes with the Turkish mercenary gangs. He was martyred alongside Şehîd Baran. 600 people attended the ceremony in Lorient, Brittany in memory of Şehîd Kendal and other revolutionaries who were martyred by the aggression of the fascist Turkish state. “Kendal was, and is, a true comrade. He was kind, thoughtful, outgoing, and made the revolution his PERSONALLY. He wasn’t just going to fight the revolution. He was going to live it. He was going to BE it. He was going to eat, sleep, and breathe the revolution. Even in our darkest times, Kendal had a level of hope and spirit I’ve never seen in any other human. Kendal, I will miss you forever. My heart is breaking a million times over. There is nobody in my life who I have lost after loving as much as I love you, and I will likely not feel this kind of heartbreak again. Without you, the world is truly a darker place,” said his comrade in memorial.
To this day, the YPG International tabûr is named in his honor.
Şahîn Huseyni – Haukur Hilmarsson
Date and Place of Birth: 22 July 1986 – Icelan
Date and Place of Martyrdom: 24 February 2018 – Afrîn
“When Haukur was a child, he was very obedient to his parents and teachers, but he always defended people who he felt had been treated unjustly,” remembers his mother Eva Hauksdóttir in an interview with an Icelandic journalist. “As he grew older, he became more rebellious towards authorities; questioning the law and the police, and I was a bit surprised because he’d always been such a good child. When I asked him about this he said it’s very different being under the authority of someone who cares for you, or if you’re under the command of some impersonal state or system with no personal connection to you. I think most of what Haukur has been doing since he was a teenager can be seen in light of this distinction he made between personal authority and the state or some other impersonal authority.”
As a youth, he was already at the forefront of many social and political struggles in Iceland. At just 17, he was organised with the environmental defense organisation Saving Iceland.
“Haukur was truly a lamplighter, of many people and struggles in Iceland and abroad,” one comrades remembers. He was usually amongst the first – the first to join the environmental protest movement in Iceland, the first to visit and organise with refugees, the first to take direct action against deportation, there at the founding of the IWW in Iceland, the first to go to Rojava.”
With his lifelong values of justice and equality, his courageous approach and his constant struggle for a free life, it is no surprise that Haukur found himself drawn to the revolution in Rojava. From Greece, where he had lived for some time, he came to join the resistance against the fascist forces which sought to crush the movement for freedom. He joined RUIS (Revolutionary Union for International Solidarity), a Greek militant anarchist group which formed part of the International Freedom Battalion. His first attempt to cross into Syria from Iraq ended in disaster as he was arrested and deported back to Iceland. In typical fashion for Haukur, he was undaunted by this setback and immediately returned, successfully crossing into Rojava in the summer of 2017.
In Rojava, he took on the nom-de-guerre Şahîn. After training with the Ş. Serkan Tabur of MLKP, he joined in the fight for the liberation of Raqqa. Heval Şahîn saw heavy fighting in the centre of Raqqa alongside the IFB. He took to military work well, becoming a capable fighter and organizer, and was quickly made a team commander in the IFB.
“Victory over fascism is in the interest of us all. In the interest of everyone, it is, after all, in the interest of all humanity.”
When the invasion of Afrîn came, like many times before, he was among the first to volunteer to go to the front. On 24 February 2018 Heval Şahîn was engaged in heavy clashes around the village of Badina, in which the resistance fighters successfully held off the advance of the jihadist gangs of the Turkish state. Heval Şahîn was martyred when a Turkish air strike hit the village, killing several comrades.His comrades in RUIS said this in remembrance:
“Haukur’s paradigm guides revolutionaries and scares the fascists. We, his comrades, continue marching his and our path, the one for revolutionary internationalist solidarity. We defend life, freedom and the land itself from mercenaries, fascists, and state’s oppression. Haukur’s revolutionary standing is motivating every freedom fighter to keep resisting and every proletarian in world to enforce and defend this revolution. To us – his comrades – he is still alive! He lives in our resistance against fascism and tyranny, empowering us to continue the struggle for social liberation!”
Like Şehîd Hêlîn Qereçox, the body of Şehîd Şahîn has yet to be recovered from the battlefield, despite pressure from family, friends and comrades. The Turkish state often withholds the bodies of SDF fighters and guerrillas in order to cause further misery to their families. The Turkish occupation forces have refused to allow anyone to enter the battlefield to search for the body of Şehîd Şahîn. On 17 June 2018, Haukur’s brother Darri scaled the roof of government offices in Iceland and hung a Turkish flag there, to draw attention to the government’s failure to act to recover his body.