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“Our struggle will be everywhere, – Pablo Neruda |
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We received the news of the horrible ethnic cleansing of Kurdish civilians in Rojava with great anguish. It is reported that Islamist thugs affiliated with the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra front carried out this brutal massacre in Rojava/Western Kurdistan, located in Northern Syria, over the last few days. It is also reported that civilians were butchered inside their homes, women and children were raped, and that there were also beheadings.
In a revealing report on OpenDemocracy, a Kurdish activist says “The people attacked us Kurds just like that in Tal Abyad, because Arab Imams had announced fatwas declaring it is religiously ‘Halal (permissible)’ to kill Kurdish men, then take their property, women and children as slaves. It is really scary to hear it when the mosque is next door to your house in a small town like here, Tal Abyad.”
Rebelling against a tyrannical regime is not just the right but also the duty of an oppressed people – this is the valuable lesson that the oppressed have learnt ever since the glorious Jacobin revolution in France. The French Revolution of Robespierre also taught us that a rebellion that forgets virtue and replaces one sect of tyrants with another is not rebellion, but barbarism. We understand that these so-called al-Nusra ‘rebels’ and the other Islamist ‘rebels’ in Syria represent precisely this barbarity. All progressive activists must rebel against the brutal and inhumane actions of these pseudo-rebels.
True to their hypocritical nature, the Americans have been harping only about an alleged chemical weapons attack by al-Assad’s forces. But the US has only given a half-hearted condemnation of the massacres of Kurds. AKP ruled Turkey has also shamelessly disregarding its peace process with the PKK and flouting all norms of humanity, has helped the anti-Kurdish Islamist gangs in Syria.
When the news of the atrocities committed on the Kurds reached grassroots activists in Tamil Nadu, they reacted with righteous anger. Activists from Tamil Nadu, urban mass political movements like the May 17 Movement, Balachandran Students’ Movement, Islamic Youth Movement Against Genocide, and others from across the world, stand in solidarity with the Kurds in this time of pain and resistance. We strongly condemn not just the brutalities of the al-Nusra hoodlums but also condemn the international powers that aid and abet such savage forces.
We are aware of how an imperialist-sponsored genocide was carried out on out brethren in Tamil Eelam. And we are also aware of how the US – which give Sri Lanka military advice to cluster bomb the Eelam Tamil people and silently watched as the genocidal Sri Lankan state used chemical weapons on the Eelam Tamils – is now crying foul at supposed chemical weapons use by al-Assad. The US’ tacit support for the Islamists that carried out the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds is condemnable and shameful.
The Kurdish struggle led by PKK leader Ocalan’s ideology and the Eelam Tamils’ struggle which was led by Pirapaharan’s LTTE indeed share a lot in common. They are the most progressive struggles of their respective regions. They are militantly secular. Their implementation of gender-justice is far advanced of the conditions in their respective regions. And both are opposed, oppressed and repeatedly betrayed by not one just country, but by the International Community of Establishments. Thus, the solidarity between global Kurds and global Tamils needs to grow.
More than any other struggle in the Middle-East, the Kurdish struggle for national liberation represents the quest for reason, modernity and egalitarianism, and a just, secular and inclusive society. One can legitimately argue that the Kurdish struggle represents the ONLY hope for the blossoming of such values in the region.
The PKK has rightly called for the Rojava revolution to be expanded to the other parts of Kurdistan.
The resistance at Rojava for peace, justice and self-determination will not be intimidated by Islamist gangs or their imperialist abettors!
Let a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand Rojavas blossom wherever there are justice-loving people in the world!
– Karthick RM, writer-analyst based in the UK
Rojhelat.info