JINHA

AMED – Women in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, Turkey are calling solidarity actions with Ferinaz Xosrawanî. Ferinaz killed herself by jumping from the window of the hotel where she worked in the Kurdish city of Mahabad, Iran. Two have died so far in the quickly spreading protests for Ferinaz in Eastern Kurdistan (in Iran).

In Diyarbakır, the women's group Congress of Free Women (KJA) held a press conference to announce their solidarity with the people of Mahabad. They will be gathering again tomorrow at 1 p.m.

"With the dose of rape and harassment rising by the day, the Iranian regime has shown its most savage face to the world," said the KJA. "The mentality of states is the mentality of masculinity; no harassment, rape or killing happens independently of the state. This event is the concrete form of the state's extermination policy." Noting that the execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who killed her rapist, was a message from the stage that women could not defend themselves.

"All women must stand up for the reality of women's resistance personified in Ferinaz Xosrawanî and escalate the women's struggle," said the KJA.

Left political parties and organizations in Turkey have been widely condemning the attack. The Socialist Women's Assemblies, part of Turkey's Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), called on the Iranian state to immediately apologize to the Kurdish people and to punish the perpetrators. The Northern Kurdistan-based Democratic Regions Party (DBP) also condemned the attack.

The International Kurdish Women's Movement has also called on women to stand up in solidarity with the women of Kurdistan. They called the rape culture in Iran an expression of the same femicide exemplified in the Iranian state's torture and mistreatment of Kurdish women political prisoners.

(fk/cm)