JINHA

AMED - The Congress of Free Women (KJA) has issued a call for international organizations and journalists to observe the ongoing violence against civilians in Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey).

The Congress of Free Women (KJA) is an organization of women's activists in Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey). The group has issued an urgent call for international human rights observers, women's groups and journalists to travel to the region to analyze ongoing killings and state violence.

"At the beginning of the 1990s, with the escalating conflict between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and state forces, difficult and deep wounds were opened as the Turkish state implemented policies of denial and annihilation, rights violations, arrests, village evacuations and 'unknown killer' murderers against Kurdish civilians," wrote the KJA. The statement noted that since Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, issued a call for peace on the Kurdish holiday of Newroz 2013, there has been increasing hope for peace.

"However, after Turkey's general elections on June 7, 2015, negotiations were rejected. In the process that began then, the state has violently cultivated an insistence on the isolation of Mr. Öcalan, bombings, political and military operations, burnings of forests, sexual violence against women and massacres of civilians."

The most recent example of this policy, the group continued, has been in the town of Silopi, in Şırnak province. Silopi is home to the Habur Border Gate between Turkey and Iraq. For 13 days, the Turkish state refused to allow the bodies of YPG and YPJ guerrillas to cross through the gate into Turkey to be buried in their native land. The fighters had lost their lives fighting against Daesh. This "was seen by the people as an attack on all social values," wrote the KJA. "This attitude, which clashes with all international legal frameworks and with human dignity, roused indignation in the people," the group continued.

"Today, Silopi is in the midst of extreme violence and destruction, a state policy against the people," said the group. "For two weeks, guns have not fallen silent in Silopi; there are ongoing bombings from the air and the ground, as well as massacres. There is no word at all from four neighborhoods.

"According to official data, four people have died and 28 have been arrested. Because state forces have arrested the wounded trying to enter the hospitals, the wounded are not going to the hospital, so the real number of wounded is unknown. According to an eyewitness, a wounded individual was executed at the hospital. People are unable to leave their houses because of the threats of special operations team, military police and police," wrote the KJA.

The group attributed the policy the state has adopted in Silopi to the so-called Internal Security Law passed at the insistence of the ruling AKP government in February and said that similar conditions were present in other provinces of Kurdistan, where the state has declared "special security zones."

The group called on all international human rights associations, institutions, observational delegations and members of the international press to travel to the region, especially Silopi, to observe the ongoing rights violations and massacres.

(gc/cm)