The new song ‘Elefteria’ released by young internationalists and Kurdish women in North and East Syria (Rojava) commemorates a young German activist woman killed in 2019 by a Turkish airstrike on the Gare region of Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The song, in memory of Eva Maria Steiger, who used the nom de guerre Elefteria Hambi as a member of various armed Kurdish groups, was produced by Young Internationalist Women, the Internationalist Commune, the Culture and Art Centre of Dêrik, the cultural women’s movement Hilala Zêrîn and Orkêş Studio.
Steiger was born in 1988 in Memmingen, Germany. Her political activism began in forest eco-occupations in Germany, where she first became interested in the environmentalist paradigm developed by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. She then decided to join the armed groups involved in the Rojava Revolution, a social-political movement in northeast Syria based on Öcalan’s model of democratic confederalism.
In 2018 Steiger joined the ranks of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) to defend against ISIS and Turkish-backed forces in Deir ez-Zor (Dêrezor). She took on the first name of Elefteria Fortulaki, a Greek mother-of-two who committed the act of self-immolation in 2006 as a protest against the capture of Öcalan, pioneer of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Kurdish movement does not endorse self-immolation.
After her time in the YPJ, Steiger travelled to the contested mountainous region in Iraqi Kurdistan to join the ranks of the all-women guerilla unit YJA-Star. The young activist is said to have fought for the Kurd’s right to self-determination with the same deep commitment she had applied to activism at home in Germany.
Steiger was killed during a Turkish airstrike in the Gare region on 25 November 2019.
The newly released song begins with a protest hymn of the struggle for Germany’s Hambach Forest, known as ‘Hambi’, denoting the second nom de guerre closen by the activist. It continues with an English poem written about her struggle, followed by a protest hymn sung in Kurdish. To close the video, a clip is shown of Steiger singing the famous Italian revolutionary song ‘Bella Ciao’.
The video makers describe Steiger as a “vanguard of young women, ecological activists, and anti-fascists of her century” and explained how made connections between the struggles she was involved in at home and abroad. Steiger believed that “the exploitation and destruction of nature in Northern Europe” and the extremist terror group ISIS are “fuelled by the same capitalist powers that destroy the nature of this planet.”
Describing Steiger as a holistic revolutionary, the producers emphasised that “as manifold as her personality and struggle was, as diverse and colourful also is her remembrance and the way she paved for those who continue her struggle.”
