JINHA

BÊDLİS – The Diyarbakır-based Kurdish women’s movement group Congress of Free Women (KJA) has released a written statement to commemorate Zeynep Kınacı (nom de guerre Zilan), who sacrificed her life in Dersim on June 30, 1996.

In 1996, Zeynep carried out a suicide action in the province of Dersim, in Turkey. The KJA described Zeynep as “the re-creator of goddess culture” and as someone who resisted the state’s massacres and cruelty targeting the Kurdish people.

Zeynep, said the statement, always emphasized the social aspects of state and masculine oppression targeting women, as well as the need to approach women’s issues from an emancipatory perspective.

There have bene a range of events in Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey) honoring Zeynep today, including a festival in her name. The festival, taking place for the first time this year, was held in a village—called Anadere in Turkish and Oranis in Kurdish—that was burned and raided by Turkish soldiers in 1993.

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