YJA Star (Free Women’s Troops) Central Headquarters Command made a written statement on the occasion of March 8, International Working Women’s Day.
The statement released on Friday includes the following:
“We salute all women who celebrate March 8, which heralds the spring of women with resistance, in the squares with the slogan ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ (Woman, Life, Freedom). We express our gratitude to our Leader, the architect of the meeting of women with their goddess essence, and we respectfully commemorate our revolutionary martyrs who protected the line of free women by sacrificing their lives. We express our promise and determination that we will bring their struggle to success on the basis of loyalty to their memories.
Labor is the fundamental value that makes human beings human. The exploitation of labor is the biggest blow to humanity. In this sense, the exploitation of labor means that human beings cease to be human. A person whose labor is exploited becomes alienated from himself, alienated from his society, in short, becomes a slave. It is this reality of slavery, which has now become systematic, that turns the wheels of the capitalist modernist system. Industrialism and monopolist capital, which are the main pillars of the capitalist modernist system, have risen on the basis of this systematic exploitation of labor that dehumanizes human beings.
Because of their essence of freedom, women were the first to rebel against the monopolist capitalist system that sets its eyes on the labor of women, children and society as a whole. Although their great struggles are not remembered in history because their names have been erased, women have always managed to be the living essence of society. In the period leading up to March 8, women have never remained silent against dehumanizing labor exploitation at any cost, including their own lives, and have been the owners of great struggles. The response of the monopolist capital, which is integrated with the state organ, has been massacre as usual.
In this sense, March 8 is of historical importance in terms of revealing the dirty collaboration of the state and capital and exposing the massacring mentality of male-dominated capital towards women. For women, March 8 means the day of gaining their self-identity by risking passing through the wheels of fire despite being pulverized on the wheels of the system. March 8 is the symbol of the resistant woman who makes the mentality of the male mind towards women visible. On this basis, meeting March 8 with resistance is the most appropriate response to its meaning.
Today, the pioneering women’s power that brought March 8 together in its true meaning has been the Free Women’s Movement, which was formed within the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Our leader’s determination that “Women’s freedom is the most fundamental pillar of our freedom struggle” has been finalized in our fifty-year struggle and has carried the Kurdish Women’s Movement to the point of leading women’s struggles around the world. The Free Women’s Movement, which concretized the reality of winning a free life by fighting against the male-dominated life and mentality, brought a new dimension to the women’s struggle with YJA Star. YJA Star, which is the expression that no value gained can be protected without self-defense, has gradually turned into the hope of all women in the Middle East and the world, especially the women of Kurdistan, from Kobanê to Shengal.
YJA Star, which has created a self-defense model for women with its legacy of resistance for more than thirty years, is the greatest defense power of women against the massacring male mentality. In this sense, it is important to act with YJA Star’s self-defense consciousness in all areas of life at home, at school, on the street, in the square. In this sense, becoming YJA Star is to resist against the rape culture imposed on women at home, at school and on the street. A woman armed with self-defense consciousness is the greatest stance against the male mentality that murders women every day. The way for women to claim their labor, bodies, souls and hearts is through becoming YJA Star. In this sense, our call is to all women; let’s rise together on the path of women who are glorified by becoming YJA Star in the line of free women. Let’s turn every moment of this century into moments of women’s freedom by claiming the values of freedom they created for women.
Our women’s liberation struggle, which our leadership considers as an epic work, paved the way for women to become ‘XWEBÛN’ (SELF) by decoding all the codes of five thousand years of masculine mentality. Our uninterrupted struggle for women’s freedom, from Saras to Zîlans, from Bêrîtans to Doğa Viyans, created great gains for women and became the expression that a society whose women are free will also be free. In this sense, women transforming the areas they are in into positions of resistance means the end of the rapist masculine mentality. The way to do this is to organize strongly. Where a single woman remains unorganized, women will continue to be subjected to violence, rape, oppression and exploitation.
Every woman who is excluded from organized life is exposed to all the brutality of the masculine mentality and distances herself from her identity. With this awareness, it is necessary to continue the struggle until there is not a single unorganized woman left. We believe that every woman who is organized will regenerate, grow stronger and reach her true social identity, just like the seeds that regenerate in the spring. In order to make this spring the beginning of the women’s spring and to say ‘STOP’ to the male-dominated, massacring system, let us make resistance with the slogan ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ the basis of our lives. Because for us women, ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ is the name of insisting on free life.
‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ is the common heritage of all women who resisted, from Rosas to Saras. ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ is the formula of how to write a free women’s history. ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ is the cry of holding the male-dominated system to account. And this March 8, let’s take to the streets with the slogan ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ and shout that we will not accept life without women, turn our shouts into an organization and start the historical reckoning with the male-dominated system, the culprit of the massacre of women.
As YJA Star, while promising to realize the women’s revolution, we congratulate once again the March 8 of our Leader, who taught us the beauty and greatness of being a woman, who is the greatest comrade of women, and all women. We commemorate with respect and gratitude all the martyrs of the revolution who were martyred in the women’s freedom struggle.”
source: AnfEnglish