Hundreds of women in Cologne, Germany, came together on Saturday at the call of the Kurdish Women’s Union of Germany (YJK-E) to show solidarity with the uprisings led by Kurdish women which have continued for five months in Iran.
The Kurdish slogan Jîn, Jîyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) has been spreading as a symbol of women’s struggle all over the world since the Iranian nationwide protests that were sparked after 22-year-old Jîna (Mahsa) Amini died in hospital following her arrest by the country’s morality police for disobeying the hijab rules.
During the Jîn, Jîyan, Azadi solidarity rally, which took place with mass participation in Cologne, women protested the global policies created to ban women from the social sphere.
Emphasizing that women’s resistance has grown and become universal, the demonstrators also drew attention to the increasing violence and repression of Iranian security forces, especially in the Kurdish cities of Iran.
Iran’s Kurdish cities have been at the forefront of the nationwide protests.
The vast majority of the 10 million Kurds living in the country live in cities in Iran’s western region, known as Rojhilat in Kurdish. Iran has been increasingly using violence to quell the uprising in the Kurdish cities.
Iranian women’s slogan “Jîn, Jîyan, Azadi” (“Zen, Zendegi, Azadi” in Persian) which has become a rallying cry for women all around the world, was developed within the Kurdish feminist movement.