Afghans, Kurds, Iranians, the fight of women under the same banner in Toulouse
Haidar is from Afghanistan, Berivan from North Kurdistan (in Turkey) and Hengameh from Iran. All three live in France and are women’s rights activists, each in their own way. A fight they came to talk about at the Diversity Space, Friday evening in Toulouse.
“Feminists have not ceased to make visible the struggles that persist.” Corine, an activist of the World March of Women, could not say better to introduce the conference-debate which was held in a packed Diversity Space, Friday evening in Toulouse.
Berivan, a human rights activist very involved in the Kurdish Women’s Association, launched the debates by replacing Kurdish history in its context since the Sykes-Picot agreements in 1916. Considering “Kurdish identity almost erased” since the 1980 coup in Turkey, Berivan has highlighted the reaction of Kurdish women who organized themselves in Europe, those women who offered their conception to the world”Jin, Jiyan, Azadi“, “Fwoman, Life, Freedom“, an idea made famous by Iranian women since they stood up as one to denounce the crime of Mahsa Amini, in September 2022.
It is no coincidence that the first demonstrations took place in Eastern Kurdistan (1), in the north-west of Iran. For a badly worn veil, Mahsa – whose real name is “Jina (2) – would undoubtedly have got away with a rape” if she had not been Kurdish, underlined Berivan, not without apologizing for the expression used. This mistreatment manifests itself to varying degrees in Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria and is one of the reasons that led Kurdish women to take up arms against Daesh, particularly in Rojava, West Kurdistan, located north of Syria. “Several thousand women have died for us here and there,” insisted Berivan, referring to Fidan Doğan, Sakine Cansız and Leyla Söylemez, murdered in Paris on the night of January 9 to 10, 2013, but also to Emine Kara , murdered with two other Kurds, rue d’Enghein, December 23, 2022.
Haidar, the president of Negar, an association supporting Afghan women, systematically followed that women had not always been banned from working, going to school or university, as has been the case since the “return of the Taliban who were offered power on a silver platter by Americans” 18 months ago. She assures him today, “40 million Afghans (or almost) are against the Taliban” in whom she sees “terrorist mercenaries”, violent men who have made Afghanistan a “Third World country ” “, but also “the first corrupt country in the world”. However, “men resist in the mountains”, while “women resist in the cities”, recalled Haidar.
Proud to be a feminist, she sees in women the only cog allowing Afghanistan to be reborn from its ashes, “because women are the central element of the family and of society”. She thinks the Taliban know this and that’s why they want to make them invisible to society. “No man in the world can stand having his wife insulted”. The Taliban “bullying women to bully men” because “women cannot educate children if they are uneducated”. For Haidar therefore, “to bully women is to keep the whole population in slavery”.
Hengameh for his part presented the fight of women in Iran as a “universal fight”. She was pleased that many men had joined them. She recalled the great demonstration of women at the very beginning of the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s. She recalled that, while “33% of women were for the Islamic revolution at the time”, Khomeini was quick to to renege on its promises and “trampling on all women’s rights”. “It’s not possible to continue like this, it’s not the life we want,” insisted Hengameh.
Corine then asked the three guests what message they wanted to convey to French women and men.
“If there is a setback for women’s rights in one country, it will happen everywhere”
“We need local support committees for the rights of Afghan women”, insisted Haidar, “in many foreign countries and in different departments”, in France, “to launch concrete actions that we will implement together” .
For her part, Berivan indicated that “the Kurdish woman is not only fighting for Kurdish women (…) but for women all over the world”, considering that “if there is a setback on the rights women in one country, it will happen everywhere”. And to cite the decline in the right to abortion in the United States or the sale of faceless dolls in Roubaix, “to make women invisible”.
“It’s your fight, it’s our fight, hammered Berivan. And as long as we’re together, we win.” And the Kurdish activist to make the connection between the war of the Kurds who protected the free world against Daesh, political Islamism and those who use religion as a weapon of destruction on the one hand, the movement to get the party out workers of Kurdistan – spearhead of the fight against Daesh – from the list of terrorist organizations, on the other. “We are freedom fighters, we want Europe and France to recognize this. By decriminalizing the Kurdish party, you are decriminalizing the legitimate struggle of the Kurdish people”.
The voice of Afghan women
Finally, Hengameh made himself the spokesperson for the Iranian diaspora in Europe by asking the French “to be the voice” of the Iranian women “whose fight was followed by the men and the children”, in other words by the people Iranian. “Everyone has their own ideology, but we need your support, to close the embassies, to fire the ambassadors, to make the petitions work.”
“There are many ways to support the Iranian people today,” concluded the young woman, to the applause of the room.