The art and cultural women’s movement Hilala Z\u00earin was invited to perform a play at the AWID Forum 2024 in Bankog, which deals with flight, occupation, but also resistance through art and culture. Unfortunately, Zeyneb and Rumet, who were invited, could not perform the play as planned because the region they come from is under attack again. But they have written a letter to the Forum, which you can read here:<\/p>\n
Dear activists, fighters, artists and defenders of women’s and human rights,<\/strong><\/p>\n We Rumet Bako and Zinab Mohammad are writing to you today both with great regret because we cannot be with you and at the same time full of fear and anger about the current situation and the future of our homeland. We are two artists and activists of the women’s cultural movement H\u00eelala Z\u00ear\u00een – literally translated: Golden Crescent – another name for the region of Mesopotamia and the Middle East – the origin of civilization, a region full of cultural diversity and beauty. It is also a region that has been affected for years by a war for power and resources, waged by the hegemonic states that create religious and ethnic conflicts to destabilize the region and its societies with war and destruction for their own benefit and with the help of armed Islamist gangs that terrorize people in the region.<\/p>\n Kurdish fighters have made great sacrifices to defend the region against the Islamic State and its inhuman and misogynistic ideology. In contrast, the population of the region has worked with great dedication to establish an autonomous self-government in North and East Syria, in which the diverse population groups of the region, such as the Kurds, Circassians, Armenians, Assyrians, Arabs and Yezidis, can live together in self-determination with their various religious communities. It is an example and a hope for a solution and peace for the entire region.<\/p>\n We, Rumet and Zinab, started our trip to Bangkok on November 21st to spread the word about this project. We are from Efrin, a region in West Kurdistan, in northern Syria, which was occupied by Turkey and gangs financed by Turkey in 2019 and the Kurdish population were displaced. For 5 years we lived with our families in a camp for refugees in Sheba near Aleppo. We organized our lives there as a community in the camp, always with the hope of being able to return one day.<\/p>\n We wanted to play a theater performance here for you today about our escape and the importance of art and culture in the resistance. However, our journey did not lead us to you. Because we are Kurdish and therefore politically persecuted, because we are from Syria, and because the population of Syria has been suffering under the international embargo for many years due to the civil war, and because various armed groups are still being used there today, it is difficult to leave the country, to obtain a visa or simply to travel safely. The Syrian state has not allowed us to leave the country.<\/p>\n We did not come to you and yet we could not return to our families either. While we decided to break off the trip, on 27 November several thousand Islamist fighters from the group Hayat Tahir el Sham (HTS), a Turkish-backed follow-on organization of Al-Qaeda in Syria, attacked villages around Aleppo by surprise and almost completely captured the city on 29 November. Important roads were blocked and the region was cut off from other parts of the country. The images on social media are reminiscent of the Islamic State. They are the same fighters, the same shouts and the same methods of terror.<\/p>\n The camp in Sheba, our home, was evacuated to protect the population from genocide. Now our families, like 100,000 others, are on the run again. We are unsure whether they are safe, whether they made it in time and we hardly sleep, worried about all those who are trapped in the villages and besieged neighborhoods in Aleppo.<\/p>\n We had both packed our suitcases for a trip to Bangkok – these suitcases are now what we have left. Suitcases full of new stories of flight and displacement, but also of art and resistance.<\/p>\n We are not here today, but we are sharing an important project of our movement with you. We are showing you the musical Stran\u00ean Keziy\u00ean Sor – \u201cSongs of the Red Braids\u201d. A joint project of H\u00eelala Z\u00ear\u00een and other art and cultural movements in the region. It is the result of an examination of the history of human development, patriarchy and the oppression of women in our region. It takes up the tradition of telling history in songs and dances and speaks of the history of resistance of women in Kurdistan and beyond instead of the history of the ruling men printed in books.<\/p>\n Today we dedicate this video to all the female fighters of the YPJ – who are currently defending our homeland again against jihadist and Islamist gangs and to all those who have given their lives in the many struggles against the male mentality of colonialism, dictatorship, occupation, exploitation and slavery, against feminicide and ecocide in Kurdistan and worldwide.<\/p>\n With greetings and respect<\/p>\n Rumet Bako and Zinab Mohammad<\/p>\n from the women’s cultural movement H\u00eelala Z\u00ear\u00een<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The art and cultural women’s movement Hilala Z\u00earin was invited to perform a play at the AWID Forum 2024 in Bankog, which deals with flight, occupation, but also resistance through art and culture. Unfortunately, Zeyneb and Rumet, who were invited, could not perform the play as planned because the region they come from is under …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-arts","category-article"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13158,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154\/revisions\/13158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kongra-star.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}