Translated from Yeni Yaşam. Author: Eren Keskin
We are trapped, all of us … It is a process that none of us has experienced before …
The virus that none of us can see, the pandemic, has ‘captured’ all of us.
August 2020 is coming to an end …
The virus that none of us can see continues to kill. But there is a system which is much older than the virus and that system continues to kill. But nobody talks about it.
Very important and painful things are happening …
However, the institutions which call themselves the ‘press’ only recognize ‘Coronavirus’ as ‘the threat’.
İpek Er, a very young girl, committed suicide in Batman, the city that we all remember from the 1990’s as the city of ‘suicides’.
Like all other young girls that took their own lives in the 1990’s, İpek decided to commit suicide in order to protect herself and her family from the patriarchal male dominated mentality.
And all these men on TV …
The channels that do not speak of this news …
They do not even mention İpek Er since the rapist is a soldier …
The perpetrators are men. The perpetrator is the state …
The women’s movement rose up, it used the power of social media and the soldier was arrested. However, the Minister of the Interior makes his speech, his ‘coded protection speech’, like he always does …
And there are two lawyers who are on ‘death-fast’ demanding justice. Their families, friends and colleagues are in the streets calling for justice. Yet, the ones that call themselves the ‘press’ are silent once more …
Injustice is worse than the virus, we are surrounded by it …
Women are being killed every day.
Every day, people are getting arrested, just because they think ‘in a different way’.
Sick prisoners are dying in the prisons.
‘Trustees’ govern all the municipalities in Kurdistan …
Now, I ask: “Is the virus more dangerous, or the system?”
People die because of feudal, militarist, patriarchal understanding.
The Armenian genocide, the Dersim genocide and all the destructive politics and policies of the 1990’s and the authoritarian militaristic system we see today …
“Are they any less dangerous than the coronavirus pandemic?”