REPORT, — Women’s Union of East Kurdistan (YJRK) a female branch of Kurdistan’s Free Life Party (PJAK) was established with the purpose of liberating the Kurdish women from the patriarchal society of Kurdistan fed and sustained by the colonial and occupying powers of Kurdistan.
“One of our aims is to dismantle the gender inequality that has been foisted on our society by the Iranian regime,” said Rengin Urmiye a coordination of member of YJRK and outlined that democratic changes in Iran would come about only with the participation of the Iranian women.
Ms Urmiye is of the opinion that the struggle of women in Iran has been going on throughout the Iranian history, but its failure lays in its lack of ideology.
“The struggle of women for freedom has been going on since the Qajar period through the Shah era and sustained to the present time,” said Urmiye and continued, “Nonetheless the women have not managed to organise themselves. The gender issue has always come after the national issue. Even though much values and prices are given, it would have been wasted, had it not an ideology behind it.”
The coordination member of YJRK observed that all the state apparatus in Iran are directed in a top-down process by a religious nucleus which is exclusively male.
Some of the most complex issues in Iran are the questions of youth, women and religion, she said and added; when doors are open to discus further these issues, more truths will be exhumed. This is why the regime is not willing to let such discussions unleash.
Rengin Urmiye also pointed out that, currently, over hundreds of women are incarcerated in the Iranian prisons due to their social and civil activisms, a fact that reflects the efforts of women in this society.
Although the Iranian women constitute a highly educated segment of the society, their participation in the social and political life amount to only 5%. In the judicial service women can only be subservient to their male colleagues and totally excluded from the decision-making institutions.
Ms Urmiye referred to the high rate of prostitution, the instrumental use of women in the criminal and mafia style activities, enforcement of marriage against the will of women, and regarded them as the factors binding women to the state.
The senior member of YJRK considered the policies of Iranian and Turkish governments of encouraging big families with more children as a tactic to strip women off the opportunity to make progress in the social lives and entangle them more in the traditional family. “Titling women as frail would lead them to the edge of abyss. The stoning is the corollary of the same policy,” she said.
Calling upon the Iranian women to join the emancipating struggle against the tyranny of patriarchal system, Rengin Urmiye stressed that the system could be compelled to change.
Pointing to the history of unity among East Kurdistan’s women, Ms Urmiye reinstated 3 points as the basis for women’s victory: independent ideology, independent organisation and independent mechanism.
In the end the senior member of YJRK revered all the women who have sacrificed their lives for the liberation of women among them Shirin Elemholi. “Comrade Shirin proved to the Iranian regime and the dominant states that slavery upon women will not be imposed any more,” she ended.