Delegates of a major feminist conference have vowed to build on the successes of feminist movements such as the Jîna (Mahsa) Amini protests in Iran to create a new revolutionary system to defend women’s rights around the world.
Some 800 women from 41 countries participated in the Second International Women’s Conference of Network Women Weaving the Future in Berlin last weekend.
The conference concluded with a statement vowing to build on the successes of the anti-government protests in Iran following the morality police’s 16 September killing of Kurdish 22-year-old Jîna Amini.
“The slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ is being chanted across the world, and women everywhere are standing up and rebelling,” the conference’s statement read, referring to the Kurdish slogan, “Jin, Jîyan, Azadî”, which quickly became a hallmark of the protests.
The feminist aspect of the protests in Iran are just one example of a wave of international women’s movements against “militarism, racism, exploitation, patriarchy, multinational capitalist companies and states,” the statement said.
The conference paid tribute to Amini and other women who lost their lives in this struggle, including Nagihan Akarsel, whose murder in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq last month is believed by many to have been ordered by Turkish intelligence, reported ANF.
“Local women leaders in Latin America are being murdered,” the statement read. “Women in Sudan, Yemen and UAE are being arrested, murdered and raped like those in Kurdistan.”
The statement urged women to unite in the face of violence perpetrated under the current system, and to fight for a new system, “to make the 21st century a women’s century.”
“As [the Kurdish revolutionary leader] Abdullah Öcalan said, ‘the life yearned for will not be achieved by miracles but by revolution.’ We are rising up and struggling for the life we yearn for in Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Latin America and Europe,” the statement said.
The conference attendees agreed to launch their international movement by producing a common roadmap based on the weekend’s discussions, and called on women to join their network and support the women’s revolution.
The conference ended with the speech of Havin Güneşer of the International Initiative for Freedom for Öcalan:
As we currently are witnessing with the ‘Third World War’, all the people who resist against capitalism and male-dominance thought system are harshly oppressed. The big struggle and resistance of Kurds, their aim to build the new, which are based on women freedom, and life freedom, are being targeted by oppressing women,” said Güneşer at the end of the conference.
