Offensive contre les Kurdes : des médias turcs se félicitent de l’exécution de civils
▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/revue-de-presse/vu-de-turquie-offensive-contre-les-kurdes-des-medias-turcs-se
La presse turque, très majoritairement favorable à l’offensive en cours contre les forces kurdes des SDF (forces démocratiques syriennes) dans le nord de la Syrie, n’hésite pas à applaudir aussi l’exécution de civils.
#Andrzej_Krauze on the EU’s failings over Syria – cartoon
« 7 giorni con i curdi » : il mio diario dal campo profughi di #Makhmour
Una settimana nell’Iraq settentrionale per toccare con mano un modello di democrazia partecipata messo in piedi da 13mila profughi. Che sperano in un futuro diverso.
Questi non sono appunti di viaggio, ma di un’esperienza in un campo profughi che in questi mesi è diventato un campo di prigionia. Il campo di Makhmour è sorto nel 1998, su un terreno arido assegnato dall’Iraq all’ONU per ospitare i profughi di un viaggio infinito attraverso sette esodi, dopo l’incendio dei villaggi curdi sulle alture del Botan nel 1994 da parte della Turchia.
Niente di nuovo sotto il sole, con Erdogan.
Quei profughi hanno trasformato quel fazzoletto di terra senza un filo d’erba in un’esperienza di vita comune che è diventata un modello di democrazia partecipata del confederalismo democratico, l’idea di un nuovo socialismo elaborata da Apo Ocalan nelle prigioni turche, attorno al pensiero del giovane Marx e di Murray Bookchin.
Il campo di Makhmour non è un laboratorio, è una storia intensa di vita.
Da vent’anni questi tredicimila profughi stanno provando a realizzare un sogno, dopo aver pagato un prezzo molto, troppo elevato, in termini di vite umane. Nel campo vi sono tremilacinquecento bambini e il 70% della popolazione ha meno di 32 anni. La loro determinazione a vivere una vita migliore e condivisa ha superato finora tutti gli ostacoli. Anche l’assalto da parte dell’ISIS, respinto in pochi giorni con la riconquista del campo. Il loro campo.
Da alcuni mesi sono sottoposti a un’altra dura prova. Il governo regionale del Kurdistan iracheno ha imposto, su istigazione del regime turco, un embargo sempre più restrittivo nei loro confronti. Nessuno può più uscire, né per lavoro né per altri motivi.
Siamo stati con loro alcuni giorni, in un gruppo di compagni e compagne dell’Associazione Verso il Kurdistan, condividendo la loro situazione: dalla scarsità di cibo, che si basa ormai solo sull’autoproduzione, alla difficoltà di muoversi al di fuori del perimetro delimitato e dimenticato anche dall’ONU, sotto la cui tutela il campo dovrebbe ancora trovarsi.
Le scritte dell’UNHCR sono sempre più sbiadite. In compenso, le scritte e gli stampi sui muri del volto e dello sguardo di Apo Ocalan sono diffusi ovunque.
Anche nella Casa del Popolo in cui siamo stati ospiti, dormendo per terra e condividendo lo scarso cibo preparato con cura dagli uomini e dalle donne che ci ospitavano.
Ma per noi ovviamente questo non è nulla, vista la breve temporaneità della nostra presenza. Per loro è tutto.
In questi anni hanno provato a trasformare il campo nella loro scelta di vita, passando dalle tende alla costruzione di piccole unità in mattoni grigi, quasi tutte con un piccolo orto strappato al deserto. E, in ogni quartiere, con l’orto e il frutteto comune.
Ci sono le scuole fino alle superiori, con un un indirizzo tecnico e uno umanistico, suddivise in due turni per l’alto numero degli alunni. Fino a tre mesi fa, terminate le superiori, potevano andare all’università a Erbil, il capoluogo del Kurdistan iracheno.
Al mattino li vedi andare a scuola, a partire dalle elementari, con la camicia bianca sempre pulita e i pantaloni neri. E uno zaino, quando c’è, con pochi libri essenziali. Ragazzi e ragazze insieme: non è per niente scontato, in Medio Oriente.
Durante le lezioni non si sente volare una mosca: non per disciplina, ma per attenzione. Non vanno a scuola, per decisione dell’assemblea del popolo, per più di quattro ore al giorno, proprio per evitare che il livello di attenzione scenda fino a sparire. Dovrebbe essere una cosa logica ovunque, ma sappiamo bene che non è così, dove si pensa che l’unico obiettivo sia accumulare nozioni. Le altre ore della giornata sono impegnate in diverse attività di gruppo: dalla cultura al teatro, dalla musica allo sport, autoorganizzate o seguite, in base all’età, da giovani adulti che hanno studiato e che non possono vedere riconosciuto il loro titolo. Perché sono persone senza alcun documento, da quando sono state cacciate dalla loro terra.
Tenacemente, soprattutto le donne svolgono queste attività, lavorando alla formazione continua per ogni età, dai bambini agli anziani.
Difficile è capire, se non si tocca con mano, il livello di protagonismo delle donne nell’Accademia, nella Fondazione, nell’Assemblea del popolo, nella municipalità e nelle altre associazioni.
Si sono liberate dai matrimoni combinati e hanno eliminato il fenomeno delle spose bambine: non ci si può sposare prima dei 18 anni.
Tutto viene deciso assemblearmente, tutto viene diviso equamente.
Uno slancio di vitalità comune, in un dramma che dura da vent’anni e in un sogno di futuro che richiede anche di essere difeso, quando necessario, con le armi.
I giovani armati vegliano sul campo dalle montagne.
Questo esperimento di democrazia partecipata negli ultimi anni è stato adottato in Rojava, la parte di Siria abitata prevalentemente dal popolo curdo e liberata con il contributo determinante delle donne: un’esperienza da seguire e da aiutare a rimanere in vita, soprattutto in questo momento in cui la Turchia vuole distruggerla.
Lì abitano tre milioni di persone, le etnie e le religioni sono diverse. Eppure il modello del confederalismo democratico sta funzionando: per questo rappresenta un esempio pericoloso di lotta al capitalismo per i regimi autoritari ma anche per le cosiddette democrazie senza contenuto.
Nel caos e nel cuore del Medio Oriente è fiorito di nuovo un sogno di socialismo. Attuale, praticato e condiviso.
Dobbiamo aiutarlo tutti non solo a sopravvivere e a resistere all’invasione da parte della Turchia, ma a radicarsi come forma di partecipazione attiva ai beni comuni dell’uguaglianza e dell’ecologia sociale e ambientale.
L’obiettivo della missione era l’acquisto a Erbil e la consegna di un’ambulanza per il campo. Non è stato facile, vista la situazione di prigionia in cui vivono gli abitanti, ma alla fine ce l’abbiamo fatta. Il giorno dopo la nostra partenza è stato impedito dal governo regionale l’ingresso a un gruppo di tedeschi, con alcuni parlamentari, che doveva sostituirci.
Di seguito trovate gli appunti sugli incontri, dal mio punto di vista, più significativi.
Mercoledì 2 ottobre: il protagonismo delle donne
Al mattino partecipiamo all’incontro delle madri al Sacrario dei caduti. Sala piena, chiamata a convalidare i risultati dell’assemblea di sabato scorso. Interviene Feliz, una giovane donna copresidente dell’assemblea del popolo, che ci sta accompagnando negli incontri in questi giorni. Il suo è un intervento forte, da leader politico. Questa ragazza è sempre in movimento, instancabile. Attorno, sulle pareti, spiccano le fotografie di almeno millecinquecento uomini e donne, spesso giovani, morti nelle varie lotte di difesa del campo. Millecinquecento su dodicimila abitanti: praticamente non esiste una famiglia che non sia stata coinvolta nella difesa drammatica dei valori comuni. Anche da qui si capisce l’identità forte dei sentimenti condivisi di una comunità.
Le donne elette per rappresentare l’Associazione si impegnano a rispettarne i principi, tra cui difendere i valori della memoria e non portare avanti interessi personali o familiari.
Sempre in mattinata, andiamo alla sede della Fondazione delle donne. Gestiscono cinque asili, una sartoria e l’atelier di pittura. La loro sede è stata rimessa a nuovo dopo la distruzione avvenuta nei giorni di occupazione dell’ISIS. Sulla parte bianca, spicca una frase di Apo Ocalan: “Con le nostre speranze e il nostro impegno, coltiviamo i nostri sogni”. L’impegno principale della Fondazione è per il lavoro e la dignità di donne e bambini. Nei loro laboratori sono impegnate sessanta persone. Seguono poi duecento giovani, bambini e ragazzi, dai sei ai diciassette anni, al di fuori dell’orario scolastico, che si autoorganizzano autonomamente: decidono insieme giochi, regole, organizzano teatri e feste.
La Fondazione è gestita collettivamente, da un coordinamento, che si trova una volta alla settimana; una volta all’anno l’assemblea generale fa il punto sui risultati, i problemi, le prospettive.
Vengono seguite anche le famiglie con problemi e si affrontano anche le situazioni di violenza domestica, ricomponibili anche con il loro intervento. Per le situazioni più drammatiche e complesse si porta il problema all’assemblea delle donne, che decide in merito. Ma il loro lavoro sul riconoscimento, il rispetto e il protagonismo delle donne avviene con tutti, anche con gli uomini, e si svolge ovunque, anche con l’educativa di strada.
La promotrice della Fondazione, Sentin Garzan, è morta combattendo in Rojava. A mezzogiorno siamo ospiti di un pranzo preparato da chi lavora al presidio ospedaliero.
Nel tardo pomeriggio, in un clima dolce e ventilato con vista sulla pianura e la cittadina di Makhmour, incontriamo l’Accademia delle donne. Tutto, o quasi, al campo di Makhmour, parla al femminile. Bambini e bambine giocano insieme. Le ragazze e le donne giovani non portano nessun velo, se non, a volte, durante le ore più calde della giornata. Ma è un fatto di clima, non di costume o di storia o di costrizione. Le donne più anziane portano semplici foulards.
All’Accademia le ragazze molto giovani, in particolare psicologhe, sociologhe, insegnanti. Ma soprattutto militanti.
Per comprendere una storia così intensa, bisogna partire dalle origini del campo, costituito, dopo sette peregrinazioni imposte a partire dal 1995, nel 1998 da rifugiati politici della stessa regione montuosa del Kurdistan in Turchia, il Botan.
Dopo, si sono aggiunti altri rifugiati. La loro è la storia intensa dell’esodo, con i suoi passaggi drammatici. Ma anche con l’orgoglio dell’autoorganizzazione.
Le donne dell’Accademia ci parlano del lungo e faticoso percorso svolto dall’inizio dell’esodo fino a oggi. Una delle figure di riferimento più importanti rimane Yiyan Sîvas, una ragazza volontaria uccisa nel 1995 nel campo di Atrux, uno dei passaggi verso Makhmour.
Era molto attiva nella lotta per i diritti civili e sociali. Soprattutto delle donne. E nella difesa della natura: anticipava i tempi.
Yiyan Sîvas è stata uccisa, colpita al cuore in una manifestazione contro un embargo simile a quello attuale. Il vestito che indossava, con il buco del proiettile e la macchia di sangue rappreso, è custodito gelosamente nella sede dell’Accademia, aperta nel 2003.
All’Accademia si occupano di formazione: dall’alfabetizzazione delle persone anziane che non sanno leggere e scrivere, all’aiuto nei confronti di chi incontra difficoltà a scuola, lavorando direttamente nei quartieri.
Ma il loro scopo principale è la formazione attraverso i corsi di gineologia (jin in curdo significa donna), sulla storia e i diritti di genere; e sulla geografia, che parla da sola delle loro origini. Si confrontano con le differenze, per far scaturire il cambiamento. Che consiste in decisioni concrete, prese dall’assemblea del popolo, come l’abolizione dei matrimoni combinati, il rifiuto del pagamento per gli stessi, il divieto del matrimonio prima dei diciotto anni.
Per una vita libera, l’autodifesa delle donne è dal maschio, ma anche dallo Stato. Sono passaggi epocali nel cuore del Medio Oriente.
«Se c’è il problema della fame», dice una di loro, «cerchi il pane. Il pane, per le donne in Medio Oriente, si chiama educazione, protagonismo, formazione. Che è politica, culturale, ideologica. Con tutti, donne e uomini».
L’Accademia forma, l’Assemblea decide: è un organismo politico. Che si muove secondo i principi del confederalismo democratico, il modello di partecipazione ideato da Apo Ocalan, con riferimento al giovane Marx da una parte e a Murray Bookchin, da “L’Ecologia della Libertà”, a “Democrazia diretta” e a “Per una società ecologica. Tesi sul municipalismo libertario”.
Ma il confederalismo democratico conosce una storia millenaria. Appartiene alla tradizione presumerica, che si caratterizzava come società aperta: con la costruzione sociale sumerica è iniziata invece la struttura piramidale, con la relativa suddivisione in caste.
Si parla di Mesopotamia, non di momenti raggrinziti in tempi senza storia.
Giovedì 3 ottobre: il confederalismo democratico
Questa mattina incontriamo i rappresentanti dell’Assemblea del popolo. Ci sono la copresidente, Feliz, e alcuni consiglieri. Verso la fine della riunione arriva anche l’altro copresidente, reduce dal suo lavoro di pastore. Di capre e, adesso, anche di popolo.
Feliz spiega i nove punti cardine del confederalismo democratico:
La cultura. Si può dire che nel campo di Makhmour da mattina fino a notte si respira cultura in tutte le sue espressioni e a tutte le età;
La stampa, per diffondere le idee, i progetti e le iniziative che il campo esprime;
La salute: da qui l’importanza del presidio ospedaliero e dell’attività di informazione e prevenzione;
La formazione, considerata fondamentale per condividere principi, valori e stili di vita comuni;
La sicurezza della popolazione: la sicurezza collettiva garantisce quella individuale, non viceversa;
I comitati sociali ed economici per un’economia comune e anticapitalista;
La giustizia sociale;
La municipalità, quindi il Comune, con sindaca, cosindaco o viceversa, con il compito di rendere esecutivi i progetti decisi dall’Assemblea; e, insieme, alla municipalità, l’ecologia sociale, considerata come un carattere essenziale della municipalità.
L’ecologia sociale va oltre l’ecologia ambientale: è condizione essenziale per il benessere collettivo;
La politica.
Ognuno di questi punti viene declinato nelle cinque zone del campo, ognuna composta da quattro quartieri. Il confederalismo democratico parte da lì, dai comitati di quartiere, che si riuniscono una volta alla settimana e ogni due mesi scrivono un rapporto su problemi e proposte, scegliendo alcune persone come portavoce per l’Assemblea del popolo.
L’Assemblea del popolo è composta dalla presidente, dal copresidente e da 131 consiglieri. Presidente e copresidente sono presenti tutti i giorni, a tempo pieno.
Le cariche durano due anni, rinnovabili per un mandato. La municipalità viene eletta dal popolo. Non sempre è facile arrivare alle decisioni, perché tutto deve essere condiviso.
L’incontro non è formale: si discute infatti di come utilizzare il luogo individuato per l’ospedale, a partire dall’ampliamento del poliambulatorio. Si tratta di coprire la struttura e, allo stesso tempo, di decidere come utilizzare gli spazi, visto che sono troppo grandi per un ospedale di comunità. Viene esclusa l’ipotesi della scuola per la dimensione dei locali; vengono prese in considerazione altre ipotesi, come la nuova sede per le attività dell’Associazione che si prende cura dei bambini down, che ha elaborato un proprio progetto, e il laboratorio di fisioterapia. Ma il primo passo, concreto, è l’avvio dei lavori per la copertura della struttura.
Il confederalismo democratico ritiene che le comunità, per poter coinvolgere tutti, debbano avere una dimensione ottimale di diecimila persone. Il campo è abitato da tredicimila persone e il modello, con le sue fatiche, funziona.
Il modello in questi anni è stato adottato in Rojava, dove vi sono oltre tre milioni di persone di etnie diverse e lì il banco di prova è decisivo. Se la Turchia non riuscirà a distruggerlo.
Ma chi lo ha proposto e lo vive non solo ci crede, lo pratica con la grande convinzione che sia il modo per cambiare dalla base la struttura sociale del Medio Oriente.
Venerdì 4 ottobre: Incontro con “M”
Incontriamo una rappresentante che ci parla delle donne che hanno combattuto a Kobane. Nel suo racconto, nell’analisi della situazione e nella valutazione delle prospettive, alterna passaggi piani a momenti di forte impatto emotivo.
Si parla del protagonismo delle donne nella liberazione del Rojava. «La guerra non è mai una bella cosa», racconta, «ma la nostra è stata, è una guerra per l’umanità. Per la difesa della dignità umana. Le donne sono partite in poche: quattro o cinque di nazionalità diverse, ma unite dall’idea che fosse necessario armarsi, addestrarsi e combattere l’oppressione e il fondamentalismo per affermare la possibilità di una vita migliore. Per le donne, ma anche per gli uomini». Per tutti.
«A Kobane la popolazione aveva bisogno di essere difesa dall’attacco dell’ISIS: da un problema di sicurezza è scaturita una rivoluzione vera. Una rivoluzione che non è solo curda, o araba, ma è una rivoluzione popolare, che sta costruendo un nuovo modello di democrazia partecipata».
In Medio Oriente, cuore della Terza Guerra Mondiale scatenata dai conflitti interni e orchestrata dalle potenze mondiali.
«Quando ci si crede, si può arrivare a risultati impensabili. Non importava essere in poche. All’inizio non è stato facile, nel rapporto con le altre donne: per la prima volta si trovavano davanti alla scelta della lotta armata in prima persona, dal punto di vista femminile. Poi hanno compreso, quando hanno visto le loro figlie venire con noi, crescere nella consapevolezza e nella determinazione per organizzare la resistenza popolare. L’organizzazione popolare è diventata determinante, non solo a Kobane, ma in tutto il Rojava.
Le donne, quando vogliono raggiungere un obiettivo, sono molto determinate. E sono molto più creative degli uomini.
Così hanno trasformato una guerra di difesa in una possibilità di cambiamento rivoluzionario, in cui tutti possono partecipare alla costruzione di un destino comune, provando a superare anche le divisioni imposte nei secoli dalle diverse religioni». Nel caos del Medio Oriente, dove in questo momento l’Iraq è di nuovo in fiamme.
«Oggi il nemico per noi rimane l’ISIS: l’YPG (la nostra formazione guerrigliera maschile) e l’YPJ (la nostra formazione guerrigliera femminile) lo hanno sconfitto, ma rimangono sacche sparse dell’ISIS e cellule dormienti all’interno dei territori liberati. Il nemico però è soprattutto la Turchia, la cui strategia sullo scacchiere del Medio Oriente, dove tutte le potenze mondiali vogliono dare scacco al re, è l’occupazione della striscia di terra che corre sotto il confine con la Siria e che collega storicamente l’Occidente e l’Oriente.
Questo territorio è il Rojava: per questo il regime di Erdogan vuole distruggerci. Sostiene, come ad Afrin, di volersi presentare con il ramoscello d’ulivo: in realtà, ad Afrin ha portato forme di repressione sempre più aspre, nuove forme di violenza etnica, una nuova diffusione dei sequestri di persona. Per arrivare al suo obiettivo, la Turchia sta costruendo un altro ISIS, come ha fatto con l’originale. Solo una parte delle tre milioni di persone presenti in Turchia è costituita da profughi: sono quelli che il regime vuole cacciare e spinge a viaggi disperati e rischiosi verso l’Europa. Gli altri sono integralisti, diretti o potenziali, che il regime di Erdogan intende tenere, avviandoli a scuole di formazione religiosa e militare, fino a quando li manderà di nuovo in giro a seminare il terrore.
La Turchia utilizza i miliardi di dollari forniti dall’Europa per ricostituire un nuovo ISIS da utilizzare nello scenario della Terza Guerra mondiale». La vecchia strategia di destabilizzare per stabilizzare con il terrore.
«La Turchia utilizza la Russia, la Russia la Turchia, la Turchia gli Europei. L’Europa, aiutando la Turchia, sta diffondendo dei nuovi veicoli di infezione.
La vittima designata è il popolo curdo, ma il popolo curdo ha la testa dura.
La minaccia principale incombe sul territorio libero del Rojava, dove è in corso un esperimento concreto di confederalismo democratico, con la partecipazione di tutte le etnie. Lo stiamo facendo con un forte impegno e una grande fatica, ma questa è la via per portare una vita migliore in una regione devastata dai conflitti etnici e religiosi, interni e scatenati dall’esterno».
Particolarmente importante, in questa situazione, è la condizione della donna. «Quando le condizioni della donna migliorano, migliora la situazione per tutti, perché vincono i principi e l’ideologia della vita contro i nazionalismi e le strumentalizzazioni del capitalismo internazionale.
Prima tutti dicevano di volerci dare una mano. Ma la memoria di molti è troppo corta. Le organizzazioni umanitarie ufficiali si schierano sempre con gli Stati, non con i movimenti di liberazione.
Il nostro obiettivo è mantenere il Rojava libero di fronte alla minaccia dell’occupazione. Dobbiamo sensibilizzare l’opinione pubblica mondiale attorno a questa nuova speranza per il Medio Oriente e costruire un ponte tra il Kurdistan e l’Europa.
Il potere della società è come un fiume che, scorrendo, cresce in maniera sempre più ampia. Noi vogliamo resistere per creare una vita migliore.
Voi, delle associazioni non legate al potere degli Stati, potete aiutarci contribuendo a diffondere le nostre idee, la nostra esperienza, la nostra storia».
Sabato 5 ottobre: incontro con i giovani che difendono il campo
Nel tardo pomeriggio incontriamo la Guardia Armata del Campo. Ci raccontano che dopo il bombardamento con i droni dell’aprile scorso, non ci sono state altre incursioni da parte dei turchi. La tensione però rimane alta anche perché nelle vicinanze ci sono ancora gruppi sparsi dell’Isis. Facciamo qualche domanda a proposito della loro vita. Ci dicono che chi si dedica alla causa curda può arruolarsi dai 18 anni in poi, anche per sempre. Se si vuol lasciare un impegno così pieno si può farlo senza problemi, anche se i casi sono rari.
Li vediamo al tramonto. Appartengono alla formazione che ha liberato Makhmour e soprattutto Kirkuk, dove i peshmerga, l’organizzazione armata del governo regionale del Kurdistan iracheno, si trovavano in difficoltà e stavano per essere sopraffatti dall’avanzata dell’ISIS.
A Makhmour hanno liberato sia il campo che la città, sede del più grande deposito di grano dell’Iraq. Poi sono tornati sulle montagne.
Con noi parla con grande convinzione uno dei ragazzi, il portavoce: gli altri condividono con gesti misurati le sue parole. Nessuno di loro ha più di venticinque anni, ma tutti e tre ne dimostrano meno.
Il ragazzo dice che la loro scelta è stata spontanea, e che li guida l’idea della difesa del popolo dall’oppressione degli Stati: non solo quelli che incombono sul popolo curdo (Turchia, Siria, Iraq, Iran), ma sul popolo in generale. In questi giorni stanno dalla parte delle proteste popolari contro il governo che sono in atto a Bagdad: la loro lotta è contro il capitalismo e durerà fino all’affermazione del socialismo che, nella loro visione, oggi si esprime attraverso il confederalismo democratico.
L’atmosfera è coinvolgente. Sotto, nella pianura, le prime luci si diffondono sul campo. Sopra, sulla montagna, loro proteggono e tutelano la serenità di bambini, donne e uomini.
I bambini del campo sono tanti e cantano insieme con un’allegria contagiosa, a ripetere giochi antichi e sempre attuali: insieme, bambini e bambine.
Loro si alzano alle quattro, poi dedicano il mattino alla formazione politica e all’addestramento fisico per chiudere la giornata con l’addestramento militare. Militanti a tempo pieno.
Sono convinti che o il futuro del mondo è il socialismo come forma di democrazia diretta e partecipata, o sarà solo morte e distruzione, come da troppi anni è in Medio Oriente, in mano alle oligarchie di potere manovrate dagli interessi del capitalismo internazionale.
Alla domanda se non li ferisce il fatto che la propaganda turca e di altri Paesi occidentali li chiama terroristi, la loro risposta è: «A noi interessa quello che pensa il popolo, non quello che dicono questi signori».
Nella quotidianità questi ragazzi non conoscono giorni di riposo o di vacanza, hanno sporadici rapporti con le famiglie per motivi di sicurezza, non sono sposati.
Proprio adesso, nel momento dell’incontro, dalla pianura salgono le musiche popolari di un matrimonio, alla cui festa vanno tutti quelli che vogliono partecipare, con le danze tradizionali e i costumi rivisitati in chiave attuale.
Ieri, a un altro matrimonio, ci siamo stati anche noi. Si respirava un’aria autentica, come erano queste feste anche in Occidente prima di diventare un’espressione inautentica di lusso ostentato e volgare.
I giovani guerriglieri intendono continuare fino a quando momenti come questo, di partecipazione popolare, saranno la regola di pace e non l’eccezione in un clima di guerra.
Nelle parole e nei gesti sono sobri e austeri, quasi oltre la loro età.
Dopo un’ora si alzano dalle rocce su cui ci siamo trovati e, dopo averci salutato con un abbraccio intenso, si avviano verso la montagna, veloci e leggeri.
Non esibiscono le armi; appartengono loro come uno strumento di difesa e di protezione. Come il bastone del pastore, che vigila sul suo gregge.
Non sono ombre, ma appaiono solari nel tramonto che scende lentamente verso la Siria.
Domenica 6 ottobre: l’uscita dal campo
Oggi tocchiamo con mano che cosa vuol dire l’embargo per il campo di Makhmour imposto dal governo regionale del Kurdistan iracheno, in accordo con la Turchia. Il popolo del campo da tre mesi non può uscire, né per lavoro, né per altri motivi. Il rappresentante delle relazioni esterne ha chiesto il permesso per poterci accompagnare fino a Erbil, ma il permesso è stato negato. Potranno accompagnarci solo fino al primo check point, dove ci aspettano dei tassisti della città di Makhmour. Da lì in avanti è una sequenza di controlli: sbrigativi quelli ai due posti di controllo iracheni, sempre più lunghi e insistenti ai tre posti di controllo del governo regionale.
Tra il campo e l’esterno è stata posta una serie di barriere a ostacoli.
Ci vogliono oltre due ore per arrivare ad Erbil, dove arriviamo in un normale albergo dopo dieci notti sul pavimento della casa del popolo. Non mi piace per nulla questo passaggio: ho già nostalgia di quei giorni, con il poco cibo curato con grande attenzione, e di quelle notti in sette per stanza, su dei tappeti stesi a terra.
Lucia e altri compagni del gruppo vanno a chiudere la pratica di acquisto dell’autoambulanza. Finalmente, dopo giorni estenuanti per la difficoltà di comunicare con l’esterno dal campo. La pratica viene risolta subito e inaspettatamente, anche con l’aiuto di alcuni compagni dell’HDP, il partito di sinistra nel Kurdistan iracheno. L’ambulanza, nuovissima, viene portata dallo stesso concessionario, una persona sensibile alla questione curda, al campo (lui, essendo un cittadino di Erbil, può muoversi), dove un video registra l’ingresso al presidio ospedaliero. Missione compiuta.
Con gli altri del gruppo andiamo a fare un giro in città, verso la cittadella. Ma Erbil mi ricorda troppo il nostro mondo, tra l’inquinamento dei pozzi petroliferi alla periferia, le centinaia di autocisterne in fila per il rifornimento, un traffico caotico. Unica differenza con le città occidentali, il suk mischiato alle firme della moda che hanno infettato le città di tutti i continenti. Torno in albergo e guardo lo scorrere delle code dalle vetrate: ho bisogno ancora di una barriera per affrontare questo mondo. Se è ancora un mondo.
Lunedì 7 ottobre: la differenza
Saliamo in gruppo alla cittadella di Erbil, patrimonio mondiale dell’Unesco. La più antica cittadella fortificata del mondo, costruita su undici strati successivi. Incontriamo il direttore del sito, che ci accoglie come dei vecchi amici e ci porta a visitare i luoghi ancora chiusi al pubblico per i lavori di scavo.
Parla fluentemente tedesco e inglese, ha abitato in Germania; poi, in piena guerra, nel 2002 è stato chiamato a ricoprire il ruolo di sindaco della città.
Lo ha fatto fino al 2016. Erbil ha più di un milione di abitanti, il Kurdistan iracheno non supera i quattro milioni di abitanti. Eppure negli anni scorsi sono stati accolti oltre due milioni di profughi fuggiti di fronte all’avanzata dell’ISIS. E loro li hanno ospitati senza alcun problema. E chi ha voluto rimanere, è rimasto. Mi viene in mente che da noi, noi?, si parla indecentemente di invasione di fronte a poche migliaia di migranti che rischiano la vita attraversando il mare. C’è chi guarda avanti, e forse ha un futuro; e c’ è chi non sa guardare da nessuna parte, e non ha passato, presente e futuro.
Nella notte tra il 7 e l’8 ottobre si parte. Verso la notte dell’Occidente.
▻https://valori.it/curdi-diario-viaggio-campo-profughi
#camp_de_réfugiés #camps_de_réfugiés #Kurdes #Irak #réfugiés_kurdes #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Öcalan #Apo_Ocalan #Ocalan #Confédéralisme_démocratique #utopie #rêve #jardins_partagés #agriculture #éducation #écoles #jardins_potagers #formation_continue #femmes #démocratie_participative #égalité #écologie_sociale #Assemblée_du_peuple #Rojava #Kurdistan_irakien
Entretien téléphonique avec #Lougar, depuis la #Commune_Internationaliste à #Derik, nord-est du #Rojava. Organisation, position, activités, projet et aspirations de la #Commune_libre et considération sur l’agression turque, ses enjeux et la résistance qui a cours.
▻http://libradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CommInternationaliste_Master.mp3
Info-#Rojava 18.10.2019 Complément
Le « #Kurds_Freedom_Convoy » résiste autour de #Serekanyie. Malgré la proclamation du cessez-le-feu au moins 30 personnes ont été tuées à Serakanyie par l’#aviation et des #drones turques. Le convoi humanitaire de civils qui depuis hier se dirigeait vers la ville pour rompre le #siège et demander l’ouverture d’un couloir humanitaire à été à nouveau attaqué. Au même moment d’autres personnes sont venues grossir la ceinture humaine qui encercle les assiégeants turco-djihadistes. 80 voitures et 400 civils. Le Kurds Freedom Convoy a rejoint à pied le village de #Mishrafa près de Serakanyie. Le village a été rasé au sol. Il y a de nombreux corps de civils tués. Sont également signalé des civils blessés dans d’autres villages avoisinants assiégées par les turques. L’on dénombre 8 tués à #Bab-al-Xer. C’est littéralement du #nettoyage_ethnique qui a cours !
Quelques images du convoi humanitaires près de Serakanyie. En particulier le village de Mishrafa rasé par les troupes turco-djihadistes.
24 social media users put in pre-trial detention over tweets in critical of Syria incursion
Turkish courts have arrested 24 social media users since the beginning of Turkey’s incursion into northeast Syria on Oct. 9 on charges of conducting a “smear campaign” against the military offensive, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
A total of 186 users have been detained thus far, the report indicated, adding that 40 of them were released pending trial, while the remaining 124 were still in police custody.
Cyber units under Turkey’s Interior Ministry have been conducting online patrolling to identify social media posts that would be considered criminal activity, the report added.
Turkey launched the military offensive after the US withdrawal from the area east of the Euphrates River, a territory held by Kurdish militia who are considered terrorists by the Turkish government.
▻https://turkeypurge.com/24-social-media-users-put-in-pre-trial-detention-over-tweets-in-critica
#répression #Turquie #arrestations #Syrie #incursion #Kurdistan #Kurdes #offensive_militaire #résistance #réseaux_sociaux
Turchia: massacrati 3.149 curdi nell’indifferenza internazionale
Ieri la Turchia ha annunciato ufficialmente e non senza una certa soddisfazione di aver ucciso 3.149 curdi nella regione siriana di Afrin dall’inizio della operazione “#Olive_Branch”.
A fare l’annuncio è stato l’esercito turco subito ripreso dai media di regime che hanno prontamente rilanciato la soddisfazione per questo vero e proprio massacro ingiustificato trascurato incredibilmente da tutti.
Secondo le forze armate della Turchia (TSK) i militari turchi appoggiati da aviazione e mezzi blindati hanno “neutralizzato” 3.149 curdi siriani che loro definiscono “terroristi”. La Turchia non fornisce nessun dato sui civili uccisi nell’operazione che, secondo l’opposizione siriana, sarebbero centinaia compresi donne e bambini.
Nel comunicato dell’esercito turco si legge che «dal 20 gennaio, data di inizio della operazione Olive Branch, i militari turchi hanno neutralizzato 3.149 terroristi appartenenti al PKK / PYD / YPG / KCK e Daesh i quali mettevano in grave pericolo la popolazione siriana».
In realtà i morti sono solo curdi e di certo non mettevano in pericolo la popolazione siriana che anzi hanno strenuamente difeso dagli attacchi di Daesh per di più appoggiato proprio dalla Turchia.
Il regime turco vuole far passare una vera e propria aggressione armata alla regione curdo-siriana di Afrin come una operazione antiterrorismo, un metodo islamo-fascista ampiamente usato da Erdogan per giustificare, anche in patria, i più efferati crimini contro chiunque si opponga al suo regime o contro chiunque lui veda come una minaccia.
Quello che stupisce è l’assoluto silenzio della comunità internazionale, soprattutto dell’Europa, di fronte a questo ingiustificato massacro di curdi. Stupisce anche l’immobilità americana che prima ha usato i curdi per combattere e fermare Daesh e poi li ha letteralmente abbandonati nelle mani del criminale nazi-islamico di Ankara, un atteggiamento da parte di Washington vigliacco e ingiustificabile sotto tutti gli aspetti specie considerando che la risoluzione ONU 2401 del Consiglio di Sicurezza impone il cessate il fuoco in tutto il territorio siriano, risoluzione palesemente ignorata dalla Turchia che ha continuato a bombardare senza sosta la regione di Afrin.
▻https://www.rightsreporter.org/turchia-massacrati-3-149-curdi-nellindifferenza-internazionale
#massacre #Turquie #Kurdes #Kurdistan #Afrin #Syrie #Kurdistan
« Les Kurdes nous ont dit "sortez, courez !" » : le témoignage de djihadistes françaises
Prises sous le feu de l’armée turque, les forces kurdes ouvrent les portes des camps de #prisonniers #djihadistes. Témoignages recueillis par deux journalistes qui les avaient suivies dans le cadre d’un livre.
Dix Françaises, membres de l’organisation Etat islamique (EI), sont libres en Syrie, après avoir pu sortir du camp d’Aïn Issa, à 50 km au nord de Raqqa. Selon nos informations, les forces kurdes, qui les détenaient, ne pouvaient plus les garder.
Ces dix Françaises et leurs 25 enfants ont été sortis du camp, dimanche 13 octobre au matin, alors que l’armée turque prenait pour cible Aïn Issa, ville sous contrôle kurde dans le nord de la #Syrie. Dans l’incapacité de gérer ces centaines de femmes djihadistes étrangères retenues dans cette prison, les gardes kurdes ont quitté les lieux, les laissant libres.
Comme les autres, les dix Françaises sont donc sorties dans la précipitation avec leurs enfants. Toutes sont connues des services de renseignement et sont sous le coup d’un mandat international pour avoir rejoint #Daech.
▻http://www.leparisien.fr/international/en-syrie-les-kurdes-laissent-s-echapper-des-djihadistes-francaises-14-10-
#femmes #camps #Kurdistan #EI #ISIS #Etat_islamique #prison #Aïn_Issa #France #françaises #fuite
Turkey is planning genocide and crimes against humanity in Northeastern Syria
Genocide Warning: January 17, 2018, renewed October 8, 2019
Kurds, Christians, and Yezidis in Northeast Syria are at grave risk of genocide by the armies of Turkey and Syria. The genocide will be supported by Russia and Iran. Turkey and Iran have sizable Kurdish minority populations, which they consider threats to ethnic and national unity. 100,000 Christians live in the area Turkey will invade. Turkey and its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, have a century old history of genocide against Christians.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced his intention to create a “twenty-mile buffer zone” in northeastern Syria, an area now controlled by the Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces. He has conducted a diplomatic offensive to get promises of non-interference from Russia, Iran, and the US for his invasion of Syria. Turkey has already stationed tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and heavy artillery along the Syrian border. When President Trump announced that US troops would withdraw from Syria in 2018, he did so after a call from Erdoğan. That announcement was met by a bipartisan Senate resolution against US abandonment of America’s Kurdish allies in northeastern Syria. 1000 US troops remain there. After another call with Erdoğan in October 2019, President Trump has again announced a US pull-out from northeast Syria. Both Republican and Democratic leaders remain opposed to US withdrawal.
Turkey began its invasion of Syrian Kurdish territory on January 20, 2018 when the Turkish Army launched cross-border military operations into Afrin in northwestern Syria with the code name “Operation Olive Branch,” The mission aimed to oust Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (or YPG) from the district of Afrin.
Turkey considers the YPG to be an extension of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency within Turkey since 1984 to achieve Kurdish human rights and regional autonomy. The YPG denies being an extension of the PKK and has been allied with the United States and other countries in the fight against the Islamic State/Da’esh since 2014.
The Turkish Armed Forces conducted their invasion of Afrin with no concern for the laws of war, dropping bombs and shelling towns indiscriminately. Hundreds of civilians around Afrin, including Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities displaced by the Syrian war and by Da’esh, were killed. Turkish forces intentionally targeted civilians, a war crime, and forcibly displaced most of Afrin’s population, a crime against humanity.
The Turkish government has characterized the YPG as a “terrorist organization,” casting its invasion of Syria as an anti-terror operation. It has also referred to its aggression against Syria as “jihad,” echoing language used by ISIS. The term “terrorist” is used in Turkey as a term to dehumanize Erdoğan opponents and legitimize the suppression of human rights and freedoms. This Turkish narrative is used as a “self-defense justification” for genocidal massacres of Kurds.
Turkey has become a police state. Since the attempted coup of 2015, the Turkish government has dismissed over 100,000 civil servants and jailed thousands of teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, and civil society leaders. for being suspected supporters of “the coup.” Many of these detainees have been charged with terrorism.; The term “terrorist” has been used to justify torture and murder of Erdoğan opponents.
The Afrin operation is similar to “anti-terror” operations conducted in Kurdish towns in Southeast Turkey for many years. In towns like Cizre, Turkish troops displaced the population, imposed harsh curfews, cut off water and electricity supplies, killed thousands of civilians, destroyed churches and mosques, pillaged homes, and bombed towns into rubble. In Cizre — as in Afrin — the bodies of killed female fighters were mutilated, videotaped, and shared widely on social media by Turkish soldiers.
The Turkish military and the other forces under its leadership, including Al Qaeda and Da’esh fighters, declared total control of Afrin on March 25, 2018. They have pursued a policy of “demographic change” in Afrin by settling villages with Turkmen and Arab families originally from outside of the area. Reports from occupied Afrin tell of dozens of girls and young women being kidnapped by Turkish and jihadi forces and subjected to systematic rape.
Turkey has declared its intention to “resettle” millions of Syrian Arab refugees now in Turkey into Kurdish northeastern Syria. This forced displacement and refoulement of refugees is a crime against humanity and a violation of UN refugee conventions. It would “resettle” Syrian Arab refugees in a region that was not their former home. Turkey’s goal is to forcibly displace a million Kurds on Turkey’s southern border and replace them with Syrian Arabs, just as the Turks have done in Afrin. Turkey intends this demographic change to destroy Kurdish autonomy in “Rojava” a self-governing Kurdish region of northeastern Syria.
Erdoğan has vowed to continue the Turkish invasion further east to Manbij and Kobane in Syria as well as to the Sinjar and Nineveh regions of Iraq, ostensibly to destroy the PKK, but actually to drive Kurds out of all Syrian border areas with Turkey. Turkey’s aggression into neighboring states threatens the long-term security of all Kurdish, Christian, and Yezidi populations in the region. Turkey’s intention is genocide.
▻https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2019/10/08/Genocide-Watch-Turkey-is-planning-genocide-and-crimes-against-humanit
#génocide #guerre #Turquie #Kurdistan #Rojava
Vu du Kurdistan irakien.Offensive turque en Syrie : Les Kurdes face à la peur du génocide
Les populations kurdes syriennes craignent des exactions de la part des forces engagées avec la Turquie, qui mènent depuis plusieurs jours une offensive dans la zone majoritairement kurde de la Syrie. La presse du Kurdistan irakien voisin se fait l’écho des craintes des civils.
Pour rappel, la vidéo « A genocide in the making » (exemple de la Turquie post-coup) :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/655013
Dans la vidéo on parle des « 8 steps to genocide » :
– classification
– symbolisation
– dehumanisation
– organisation
– polarisation
– preparation
– extermination
– denial
Intervention turque en Syrie
La révolution politique du Rojava menacée de toute part
Stéphane Ortega
▻https://lavoiedujaguar.net/Intervention-turque-en-Syrie-La-revolution-politique-du-Rojava-menac
Pour la troisième fois en trois ans, l’armée turque pénètre dans le nord de la Syrie, menaçant l’auto-organisation démocratique, féministe et multiethnique créée par les Kurdes au Rojava.
Pour les forces kurdes du nord de la Syrie, il y a d’abord les ennemis acharnés. Ce qu’il reste de Daech bien sûr, mais aussi la Turquie associée aux milices djihadistes qu’elle soutient et pilote. Et puis, il y a tous les autres : vrais adversaires ou faux amis. De la coalition internationale à la Russie, en passant par l’Iran ou le régime syrien, ils sont nombreux à jouer leur propre partition qui passe pour beaucoup par la fin de la tentative révolutionnaire au Rojava, nom de la région autoadministrée par les Kurdes au nord de la Syrie.
Profitant du déplacement des troupes de Bashar al-Assad de leur région vers Alep à l’été 2012, les Kurdes ont entamé un processus d’autogouvernement dans les cantons d’Afrine, Kobané et Djézireh. Le Parti pour l’unité démocratique (PYD), proche du PKK, et les milices de protection du peuple (YPG/YPJ) supplantent les partis concurrents pour devenir la force dominante. Ils s’appuient sur l’auto-organisation des communes, pensées comme une alternative à la création d’un État-nation (...)
#Syrie #Rojava #Turquie #Kurdistan #autogouvernement #Erdogan #djihadistes #offensive #résistance #Russie #USA #Europe
ZinTV : Les combattantes du Rojava ne se reconnaissent pas dans le film de Caroline Fourest
▻https://www.zintv.org/Les-combattantes-du-Rojava-ne-se-reconnaissent-pas-dans-le-film-Soeur-d-arme-
Malgré l’actualité brûlante au Rojava ces derniers jours, il nous fallait mettre au clair les utilisations médiatiques du Rojava par les médias occidentaux, en particulier avec la sortie de Sœurs d’armes cette semaine.
Le film de Caroline Fourest et Patrice Franceschi sort aujourd’hui au cinéma. La réalisatrice, dont c’est le premier film, traite par la fiction du génocide des Yézidis commis par Daech en 2014. Il n’est pas difficile de reconnaître que le scénario souligne bien le rôle des femmes dans cette guerre et illustre efficacement la barbarie des djihadistes. Ce sont bien là ses deux seules qualités.
Caroline Fourest présente les forces kurdes comme une entité unique, aux contours politiques flous. Peshmergas et combattants du PKK sont présentés comme luttant côte à côte contre les djihadistes. Pourtant, ce sont bien les combattants du YPG et du PKK qui ont ouvert un corridor humanitaire permettant de sauver les Yézidis, alors que les Peshmergas s’enfuyaient face à l’avancée des djihadistes. Fourest, ayant réalisé son film au Kurdistan irakien, a choisi de faire plaisir à ses hôtes, quitte à travestir la réalité historique dans son film. De discrètes allusions, que seuls les fins connaisseurs de la cause kurde peuvent comprendre, viennent nuancer cette grossière tentative de réécriture de l’Histoire. La fiction n’est pas un passe-droit permettant de s’affranchir de la réalité d’un conflit en cours.
Les scènes de combat, qui font la fierté de la réalisatrice et de son consultant militaire Patrice Franceschi, n’ont absolument aucune crédibilité. Elles sont médiocrement inspirées d’une vision hollywoodienne de la guerre (le budget en moins) à laquelle même un enfant ne pourrait croire. La réalisatrice et son actrice Camélia Jordana, ont répété sur le plateau de Quotidien cette semaine combien elles s’étaient « éclatées » à faire un film de guerre. La guerre n’est pas un divertissement. La montrer sous son vrai visage, même dans une fiction, a toujours une fonction éducative.
Cette guerre, nous l’avons faite et nous ne nous sommes pas « éclatés ». Les deux héroïnes du film sont des volontaires françaises rejoignant les rangs des kurdes, pourtant Caroline Fourest n’a pas interrogé un seul d’entre nous. La réalisatrice n’est manifestement pas intéressée par la réalité de notre expérience. Ce qui lui tient à cœur c’est de défendre sa propre vision de cette lutte pour lui faire dire ce qui sert son propre combat politique et sa propre vision du féminisme, quitte à gravement caricaturer la cause qu’elle prétend défendre. Pour preuve, des combattantes kurdes sont représentées en train de consommer de l’alcool, ou de flirter avec leurs homologues masculins. La consommation d’alcool ou les rapports intimes sont deux tabous absolus au sein YPG-J.
L’organisation met un point d’honneur à être irréprochable sur ces points, afin de garantir sa moralité aux yeux des sociétés kurdes et arabes extrêmement conservatrices. Dans son film, Caroline Fourest fait dire à une combattante kurde embrassant un camarade : « On ne s’est pas battu contre les soldats de Daech pour vivre comme eux ». Comme nous venons de l’expliquer, cette tirade n’illustre en rien la mentalité des combattantes kurdes, bien au contraire. En tentant de faire rentrer ces combattantes dans le moule de son féminisme occidental et institutionnel, Caroline Fourest commet une faute grave, qui va compromettre la réputation du YPJ à l’étranger, notamment dans le monde arabe où son film est diffusé.
Nous appelons d’une façon générale une méfiance face aux représentants autoproclamés du Rojava et garder un esprit critique sur la vision impérialiste que peut avoir l’Occident à l’égard d’une révolution du Moyen-Orient.
Pour les raisons que nous venons d’énoncer, le CCFR prend clairement position contre ce film, qui ne représente ni les combattantes et combattants français du YPG-J, ni la cause kurde qu’il prétend pourtant défendre, et appelons à ne pas aller le voir.
Déclaration de la Commune internationaliste du Rojava
▻https://paris-luttes.info/declaration-de-la-commune-12710
Les Kurdes de Syrie ont commencé à payer le prix de la trahison de l’Occident. Une pluie de bombes s’est abattue mercredi après-midi sur les villes frontière, précédant de peu une offensive terrestre de l’armée turque et de ses alliés islamistes de Syrie. Le macabre décompte des victimes peut débuter. On imagine l’effroi qui a saisi les habitants du #Rojava déjà durement éprouvés par plusieurs années de guerre contre les djihadistes.
Le tweet dominical de Donald Trump avait annoncé la trahison ultime des Etats-Unis. Mais l’offensive turque répond à une logique plus profonde. A force de voir l’Union européenne lui manger dans la main, à force de jouer sans trop de heurts la balance géopolitique entre Moscou et Washington au gré de l’opportunisme des deux grandes puissances, Recep Tayyip Erdogan a des raisons de se sentir intouchable. Lorsqu’en 2015 et 2016, il faisait massacrer sa propre population dans les villes kurdes de Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi ou Sur, le silence était de plomb.
L’offensive débutée hier, le sultan l’annonce de longue date, sans provoquer de réaction ferme des Européens. La girouette Trump a bon dos : en matière d’allégeance à Ankara, les Européens sont autrement plus constants.
Il faudra pourtant stopper Erdogan. Laisser le #Kurdistan_syrien tomber aux mains des milices islamistes et de l’armée turque reviendrait à cautionner un crime impardonnable. A abandonner des centaines de milliers de civils, dont de très nombreux réfugiés, et des milliers de combattants de la liberté à leurs bourreaux. Ce serait également la certitude d’une guerre de longue durée entre la Turquie et sa propre minorité kurde, environ un cinquième de sa population.
Plusieurs pays européens ont réclamé une réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Le signe d’un sursaut ? L’espoir d’un cessez-le-feu rapide ? Ou des jérémiades d’arrière-garde, qui cesseront dès que la Turquie aura atteint ses objectifs ?
Comme souvent, la superpuissance étasunienne détient les cartes maîtresses. Et Donald Trump n’en est pas à son premier virage intempestif. S’il a donné son feu vert à Erdogan, le républicain se retrouve coincé entre les interventionnistes et les isolationnistes de son propre parti. Hier, le premier camp s’indignait bruyamment. Exerçant une pression redoutable pour un président déjà affaibli par le dossier ukrainien.
Il faudra qu’elle pèse aussi sur les dirigeants européens. La solidarité avec le Rojava doit devenir une priorité du mouvement social et des consciences.
Rojava : une guerre de classe !
L’invasion du Nord de la Syrie par l’armée turque marque non seulement le retour à la pratique des guerres coloniales mais c’est aussi et surtout une riposte létale du capitalisme à toute initiative d’émancipation sociale et d’autonomie des peuples asservis...
... et on est tous bien obligés de constater que la soi-disant « construction européenne » reste immobile et impuissante devant des événements qui laissent malheureusement pressentir une catastrophe humanitaire.
Comme si nous étions replongés à la veille de la deuxième guerre mondiale, avec le « Mourir pour Dantzig ? » de Marcel Déat publié à la une de « l’Oeuvre » le 4 mai 1939, qui n’était que la réaction d’un pacifisme dévoyé au « lâche soulagement » des « accords de Munich » donnant les mains libres à Hitler pour s’emparer du minerai de fer tchécoslovaque...
Aujourd’hui où le sultan-dictateur Erdogan profite du dérangement mental du maître américain pour déclencher une guerre impérialiste, il ne s’agit pas de « mourir pour le Rojava » mais de sauver les Kurdes d’un massacre annoncé et programmé de longue date par le capitalisme ottoman qui redoute la contagion politique et sociale diffusée par le municipalisme libertaire du Rojava dont les idées, reprises par le PKK, seraient susceptibles de se répandre en Turquie même !
Le rouleau-compresseur de l’armée turque est donc l’instrument d’une guerre de classe.
Alors est-il possible de tolérer que la Turquie soit encore membre de l’OTAN ?
Par ailleurs, cette offensive ne va-t-elle pas profiter aux hordes barbares de l’ex califat DAESH pour se regrouper afin de poursuivre le djihad ?
En 1871, l’armée prussienne qui assiégeait Paris, avait autorisé le passage de plusieurs divisions versaillaises pour qu’elles prennent les Fédérés à revers. Et ensuite, elle avait assisté, impassible, aux massacres de la Semaine Sanglante !
Allons nous, aujourd’hui, rester indifférents à cette opération génocidaire ?
Un crime contre l’humanité.
▻https://blogs.mediapart.fr/vingtras/blog/111019/rojava-une-guerre-de-classe-0
Syria-Turkey briefing: The fallout of an invasion for civilians
Humanitarians are warning that a Turkish invasion in northeast Syria could force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, as confusion reigns over its possible timing, scope, and consequences.
Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva on Monday that any military operation must guard against causing further displacement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” he said, noting that an estimated 1.7 million people live in the country’s northeast.
Some residents close to the Syria-Turkey border are already leaving, one aid worker familiar with the situation on the ground told The New Humanitarian. Most are staying with relatives in nearby villages for the time-being, said the aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous in order to continue their work.
The number of people who have left their homes so far remains relatively small, the aid worker said, but added: “If there is an incursion, people will leave.”
The International Rescue Committee said “a military offensive could immediately displace at least 300,000 people”, but analysts TNH spoke to cautioned that the actual number would depend on Turkey’s plans, which remain a major unknown.
As the diplomatic and security communities struggle to get a handle on what’s next, the same goes for humanitarians in northeastern Syria – and the communities they are trying to serve.
Here’s what we know, and what we don’t:
What just happened?
Late on Sunday night, the White House said that following a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” adding that US soldiers would not be part of the move, and “will no longer be in the immediate area”.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – the Syrian-Kurdish-led militia that until now had been supported by the United States and played a major role in wresting territory back from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria – vowed to stand its ground in the northeast.
An SDF spokesperson tweeted that the group “will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to DEFEND ourselves and our people”.
Leading Republicans in the US Congress criticised President Donald Trump’s decision, saying it represents an abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria, and the Pentagon appeared both caught off-guard and opposed to a Turkish incursion.
Since then, Trump has tweeted extensively on the subject, threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey” if the country does anything he considers to be “off limits”.
On the ground, US troops have moved out of two key observation posts on the Turkey-Syria border, in relatively small numbers: estimates range from 50 to 150 of the total who would have been shifted, out of around 1,000 US soldiers in the country.
What is Turkey doing?
Erdogan has long had his sights on a “safe zone” inside Syria, which he has said could eventually become home to as many as three million Syrian refugees, currently in Turkey.
Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said in August that only 17 percent of Turkey’s estimated 3.6 million Syrian refugees come from the northeast of the country, which is administered by the SDF and its political wing.
Turkish and US forces began joint patrols of a small stretch of the border early last month. While Turkey began calling the area a “safe zone”, the United States referred to it as a “security mechanism”. The terms of the deal were either never made public or not hammered out.
In addition to any desire to resettle refugees, which might only be a secondary motive, Turkey wants control of northeast Syria to rein in the power of the SDF, which it considers to be a terrorist organisation.
One of the SDF’s main constituent parts are People’s Defense Units – known by their Kurdish acronym YPG.
The YPG are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK – a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist organisation that has conducted an insurgency against the Turkish government for decades, leading to a bloody crackdown.
While rebels fight for the northwest, and Russian-backed Syrian government forces control most of the rest of Syria, the SDF currently rules over almost all of Hassakeh province, most of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, and a small part of Aleppo province.
How many civilians are at risk?
There has not been a census in Syria for years, and numbers shift quickly as people flee different pockets of conflict. This makes estimating the number of civilians in northeast Syria very difficult.
The IRC said in its statement it is “deeply concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the two million civilians in northeast Syria”; Moumtzis mentioned 1.7 million people; and Save the Children said “there are 1.65 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in this area, including more than 650,000 displaced by war”.
Of those who have had to leave their homes in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hassakeh, only 100,000 are living in camps, according to figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Others rent houses or apartments, and some live in unfinished buildings or tents.
“While many commentators are rightly focusing on the security implications of this policy reversal, the humanitarian implications will be equally enormous,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, and a former high-ranking Obama administration aid official.
“All across Northern Syria, hundreds of thousands of displaced and conflict-affected people who survived the horrors of the… [IS] era will now face the risk of new violence between Turkish and SDF forces.”
Who will be first in the firing line?
It’s unlikely all of northeast Syria would be impacted by a Turkish invasion right away, given that so far the United States has only moved its troops away from two border posts, at Tel Abyad (Kurdish name: Gire Spi), and roughly 100 kilometres to the east, at Ras al-Ayn (Kurdish name: Serê Kaniyê).
Depending on how far into Syria one is counting, aid workers estimate there are between 52,000 to 68,000 people in this 100-kilometre strip, including the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn themselves. The aid worker in northeast Syria told TNH that if there is an offensive, these people are more likely, at least initially, to stay with family or friends in nearby villages than to end up in camps.
The aid worker added that while humanitarian operations from more than 70 NGOs are ongoing across the northeast, including in places like Tel Abyad, some locals are avoiding the town itself and, in general, people are “extremely worried”.
What will happen to al-Hol camp?
The fate of the rest of northeast Syria’s population may also be at risk.
Trump tweeted on Monday that the Kurds “must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families”.
The SDF currently administers al-Hol, a tense camp of more than 68,000 people – mostly women and children – deep in Hassakeh province, where the World Health Organisation recently said people are living “in harsh and deplorable conditions, with limited access to quality basic services, sub-optimal environment and concerns of insecurity.”
Many of the residents of al-Hol stayed with IS through its last days in Syria, and the camp holds both these supporters and people who fled the group earlier on.
Last week, Médecins Sans Frontières said security forces shot at women protesting in a part of the camp known as “the annex”, which holds around 10,000 who are not Syrian or Iraqi.
The SDF also holds more than 10,000 IS detainees in other prisons, and the possible release of these people – plus those at al-Hol – may become a useful bargaining chip for the Kurdish-led group.
On Monday, an SDF commander said guarding the prisoners had become a “second priority” in the wake of a possible Turkish offensive.
“All their families are located in the border area,” General Mazloum Kobani Abdi told NBC News of the SDF fighters who had been guarding the prisoners. “So they are forced to defend their families.”
▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/08/syria-turkey-briefing-fallout-invasion-civilians
#Syrie #Turquie #guerre #conflit #civiles #invasion #al-Hol #Kurdistan #Kurdes #camps #camps_de_réfugiés
ping @isskein
Il faut stopper Erdogan
Les Kurdes de Syrie ont commencé à payer le prix de la trahison de l’Occident. Une pluie de bombes s’est abattue mercredi après-midi sur les villes frontière, précédant de peu une offensive terrestre de l’armée turque et de ses alliés islamistes de Syrie. Le macabre décompte des victimes peut débuter. On imagine l’effroi qui a saisi les habitants du #Rojava déjà durement éprouvés par plusieurs années de guerre contre les djihadistes.
Le tweet dominical de Donald Trump avait annoncé la trahison ultime des Etats-Unis. Mais l’offensive turque répond à une logique plus profonde. A force de voir l’Union européenne lui manger dans la main, à force de jouer sans trop de heurts la balance géopolitique entre Moscou et Washington au gré de l’opportunisme des deux grandes puissances, Recep Tayyip Erdogan a des raisons de se sentir intouchable. Lorsqu’en 2015 et 2016, il faisait massacrer sa propre population dans les villes kurdes de Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi ou Sur, le silence était de plomb.
L’offensive débutée hier, le sultan l’annonce de longue date, sans provoquer de réaction ferme des Européens. La girouette Trump a bon dos : en matière d’allégeance à Ankara, les Européens sont autrement plus constants.
Il faudra pourtant stopper Erdogan. Laisser le #Kurdistan_syrien tomber aux mains des milices islamistes et de l’armée turque reviendrait à cautionner un crime impardonnable. A abandonner des centaines de milliers de civils, dont de très nombreux réfugiés, et des milliers de combattants de la liberté à leurs bourreaux. Ce serait également la certitude d’une guerre de longue durée entre la Turquie et sa propre minorité kurde, environ un cinquième de sa population.
Plusieurs pays européens ont réclamé une réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Le signe d’un sursaut ? L’espoir d’un cessez-le-feu rapide ? Ou des jérémiades d’arrière-garde, qui cesseront dès que la Turquie aura atteint ses objectifs ?
Comme souvent, la superpuissance étasunienne détient les cartes maîtresses. Et Donald Trump n’en est pas à son premier virage intempestif. S’il a donné son feu vert à Erdogan, le républicain se retrouve coincé entre les interventionnistes et les isolationnistes de son propre parti. Hier, le premier camp s’indignait bruyamment. Exerçant une pression redoutable pour un président déjà affaibli par le dossier ukrainien.
Il faudra qu’elle pèse aussi sur les dirigeants européens. La solidarité avec le Rojava doit devenir une priorité du mouvement social et des consciences.
#Al-Hol detainees attack guards and start fires as Turkish assault begins
Camp holding thousands of Islamic State suspects thrown into ’chaos’, says Kurdish official
The Turkish assault on northeast Syria has prompted Islamic State group-affiliated women and youth in al-Hol’s camp to attack guards and start fires, a Kurdish official told Middle East Eye.
Kurdish-held northeastern Syria has been on high alert since the United States announced on Sunday it would leave the area in anticipation of a Turkish offensive.
Over the three days since the US announcement, chaos has broken out in the teeming al-Hol camp, Mahmoud Kro, an official that oversees internment camps in the Kurdish-run autonomous area, told MEE.
Some 60,000 people suspected of being affiliated or linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, the majority women and children, are being held in the camp.
“There are attacks on guards and camp management, in addition to burning tents and preparing explosive devices,” Kro told MEE from Qamishli.
The status of al-Hol’s detainees has been a major concern since Turkey began making more threats to invade northeast Syria this year.
In the phone call between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump on Sunday that precipitated the United States’ pullout, the US president pressed his Turkish counterpart on the fate of foreign IS suspects in Kurdish custody, MEE revealed.
‘Targeting our existence as Kurds’
Turkey launched its assault on northeastern Syria on Wednesday alongside its Syrian rebel allies, aiming, it says, to push the Kurdish YPG militia at least 32km from the border.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the outlawed PKK militant group.
However, the YPG is a leading component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, which has been Washington’s principal partner on the ground in the fight against IS.
SDF fighters guard al-Hol, but Kro said the Turkish attack would draw them away to join the battle.
“Any war in the region will force the present forces guarding the camp to go defend the border,” he said. “This will increase the chance of chaos in the camp.”
Kro said that the administration in al-Hol has not made any preparations for a war with Turkey because the SDF’s priority is protecting northeast Syria and Kurds.
“In terms of preparations, our first priority is protecting our region and existence,” he said. “The Turks are targeting our existence as Kurds to the first degree.”
Some officials from the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, agree with Kro’s assessment that the detainees in al-Hol could get out.
“If fighting breaks out between the SDF and Turkey, security at prisons will relax and prisoners could escape,” Bassam Ishak, the co-chair of the SDC in the US, told MEE ahead of the offensive.
Meanwhile, SDC spokesman Amjad Osman said, as other Syrian Kurdish officials have, that a Turkish attack on northeast Syria would negatively affect the continuing war on IS in the country.
“We are committed to fighting terrorism,” he told MEE. “But now our priority is to, first of all, confront the Turkish threats. And this will have a negative effect on our battle against Daesh,” using the Arabic acronym for IS.
However, Turkey has bristled at the suggestion that the camps and fight against IS will be endangered by Ankara’s offensive.
“This blackmail reveals the true face of the YPG and demonstrates how it has no intent of fighting against IS,” a Turkish official told MEE.
Some residents of northeast Syria are already starting to flee. Many fear yet another war in the country that is still dealing with the conflict between government and rebel forces, and lingering IS attacks.
Osman stopped short of saying the SDF would pack up and leave al-Hol. However, it will be hard for the group to keep holding the Syrian, Iraqi and international detainees during such a war, he said.
“We are trying as much as possible to continue protecting the camps,” Osman said. “But any attempt to drag us into a military battle with Turkey will have a dangerous impact.”
▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/al-hol-detainees-attack-guards-and-start-fires-turkish-assault-begins
#ISIS #Etat_islamique #EI
Guns, Filth and #ISIS: Syrian Camp Is ‘Disaster in the Making’
In the desert camp in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters’ wives and children have been trapped for months in miserable conditions with no prospects of leaving, ISIS sympathizers regularly torch the tents of women deemed infidels.
Fights between camp residents have brought smuggled guns into the open, and some women have attacked or threatened others with knives and hammers. Twice, in June and July, women stabbed the Kurdish guards who were escorting them, sending the camp into lockdown.
Virtually all women wear the niqab, the full-length black veil demanded by ISIS’s rigid interpretation of Islam — some because they still adhere to the group’s ideology, others because they fear running afoul of the true believers.
The Kurdish-run #Al_Hol camp is struggling to secure and serve nearly 70,000 displaced people, mainly women and children who fled there during the last battle to oust the Islamic State from eastern Syria. Filled with women stripped of hope and children who regularly die before receiving medical care, it has become what aid workers, researchers and American military officials warn is a disaster in the making.
Image
The daily ordeals of overcrowded latrines and contaminated water, limited medical care, flaring tensions between residents and guards, and chronic security problems have left the residents embittered and vulnerable. A recent Pentagon report that cautioned that ISIS was regrouping across Iraq and Syria said ISIS ideology has been able to spread “uncontested” at the camp.
It is impossible to know how many of the women are ISIS believers, and many have publicly disavowed the group. But a stubborn core of followers is menacing the rest with threats, intimidation and, occasionally, violence, aid workers and researchers who have interviewed Al Hol residents said.
The result is something more like a prison than a camp, a place where security concerns often overwhelm humanitarian ones — which only heightens the danger, according to aid workers and researchers who described conditions there to The New York Times.
“Living in conditions that are difficult and being surrounded by people who are highly radical — is that conducive to deradicalization?” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking who researches Syria and Iraq, and who has visited the camp twice recently.
Editors’ Picks
25 Years Later, It Turns Out Phoebe Was the Best Friend
Following the Lead of the Diving Girl
The Perfect Divorce
“This is a place that can possibly radicalize someone, but certainly doesn’t help deradicalize anyone,” she added.
Yet few have been able to leave.
The Iraqis face being ostracized for their ISIS associations or sent to detention camps if they return to Iraq, which has been executing people accused of being ISIS members in what watchdogs and journalists have called sham trials. The Syrians may not have homes to go back to.
And the roughly 10,000 foreigners from at least 50 other countries are largely unwanted at home.
The Kurdish authorities overseeing the camp have pleaded for the non-Syrians to be allowed to return to their own countries, saying they are not equipped to detain them indefinitely. But only a few countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have repatriated their citizens on a large scale, with the occasional exception of a few young children whom Western governments have agreed to take back.
“They’re in no man’s land. They’re in limbo,” said Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch who visited the camp earlier this year. “They’re stuck in the desert in a camp that’s not equipped for their needs, with children who grew up in the worst possible conditions, only to get to a place where things are, if possible, even worse.”
Adding to their frustration, the women have little information about where their ISIS fighter husbands are. Authorities at first told them that they would be reunited with their relatives or at least be allowed to speak to them, but little has come of that promise, partly because contact is seen as a security risk.
“I’m struggling to reconcile the two things, wanting to look at them as displaced people and human,” said Dareen Khalifa, an International Crisis Group analyst who has visited the camp, but some of the women are “very ideological, and the atmosphere is very ripe for all sorts of indoctrination of little kids and of women who just don’t know what’s going to happen to them or their families.”
The struggles of daily life have not helped.
The tents were freezing cold in the winter and have been swelteringly hot this summer, with temperatures rising as high as 122 degrees. Much of the water is contaminated with E. coli. Human Rights Watch researchers saw children drinking water from a tank with worms coming out of the spout, according to a report the group released in July, and the skin of many women and children they saw was pocked with sores caused by a parasite.
Conditions are especially poor in the so-called annex, where those who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi are housed, including more than 7,000 children — about two-thirds of whom are younger than 12 — and 3,000 women.
Annex residents are not allowed to leave their section without a guard. The authorities have also restricted aid groups’ access to the annex, making it difficult to provide much more than basics like water and food, aid workers said.
As a result, children in the annex are going without school and other services. There is not even a playground.
“We fear that the narrative of a radicalized population has played a role in hindering humanitarian access,” said Misty Buswell, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee. “The youngest and most vulnerable are paying the highest price and suffering for the perceived misdeeds of their parents.”
Aid groups are gradually expanding services to keep up with the camp’s population, which leapt from under 10,000 at the end of 2018, to more than 72,000 as ISIS lost its last territory in March. But donors are wary of supporting a camp perceived to be housing hardened ISIS followers.
Medical care in the annex is limited to two small clinics, neither of which operates overnight, and women from the annex must clear numerous hurdles to be referred to an outside hospital. Women there regularly give birth in a tent without a doctor or a midwife, aid workers said.
The number of child deaths — mostly from treatable conditions like severe malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia — has nearly tripled since March, Ms. Buswell said. Between December and August, the deaths of 306 children under 5 have been recorded at the camp, she said. Almost a third of them were in the annex, double or sometimes triple the rate of deaths elsewhere in the camp, often because children there cannot get medical care, she said.
The women’s grievances are on display in the group chat channels where some of them congregate, which simmer with violent videos, sinister rumors and desperation.
One recurring message in the group-chat app Telegram holds, without evidence, that Kurdish guards are kidnapping children and forcing them to serve in Kurdish militias. Another rumor falsely claims that camp residents’ organs are being sold. Others allege murders, sexual assaults and rapes. Many of the posts are pure ISIS propaganda, including beheading videos and vows to rebuild the so-called caliphate.
Given that residents are being guarded by the same military force that fought their husbands and sons, the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the tensions may have been inevitable. The families who arrived between December and March were among the most committed of the group’s followers, Ms. Tsurkov said, choosing to leave only as the last shreds of the caliphate were being bombarded.
Aid workers and researchers said the guards often raid women’s tents at night, confiscating items or relocating families for what they say are security reasons, and fire into the air to keep order. Guards have confiscated women’s cash and valuables, leaving them without money to buy fresh food for their children, according to Human Rights Watch. Women in the annex are not allowed to have cellphones, though some do anyway.
A spokesman for the camp did not reply to a request for comment for this article. But the camp authorities, as well as some aid workers and researchers, have said extra security measures were warranted by the frequent outbreaks of bullying, harassment and violence.
The Pentagon report said local forces did not have enough resources to provide more than “minimal security,” allowing extremist ideology to spread unchecked.
“It’s a cycle of violence,” said Ms. Kayyali, the Human Rights Watch researcher. “ISIS has committed atrocities against the world. Policymakers don’t want to deal with anyone connected to ISIS. Then they’re re-radicalized by mistreatment, and they go back to what they know.”
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/world/middleeast/isis-alhol-camp-syria.html
#réfugiés #asile #migrations #déplacés_internes #IDPs #Syrie #réfugiés_syriens #Etat_islamique #violence #Kurdes #Kurdistan_syrien #radicalisation
Dans le nord-est de la Syrie, la mort lente des #prisonniers djihadistes
« Le Monde » a pu accéder à l’un des centres gérés par les forces kurdes. S’y entassent des centaines de détenus, les derniers irréductibles du « califat » du groupe Etat islamique, souvent blessés ou mourants.
La mort a une odeur. Le désespoir aussi ; son effluve se mêle à celle de la maladie, de la dysenterie, de la chair humaine que la vie, peu à peu, abandonne. Quand la porte de la cellule réservée aux malades de cette prison pour membres de l’organisation Etat islamique (EI) du nord-est de la Syrie s’ouvre sur d’innombrables détenus en combinaisons orange, entassés les uns sur les autres sur toute la superficie d’une pièce de la taille d’un hangar, c’est bien cette odeur-là qui étreint la poitrine.
Les responsables de la prison, appartenant aux forces kurdes de sécurité, ne connaissent pas le nombre d’hommes et d’enfants qui gisent là, entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts. « On ne peut pas les compter. Ça change tout le temps. » Certains guérissent et regagnent leurs cellules. D’autres meurent.
So this is when you come home, kedi ? | KEDISTAN
▻http://www.kedistan.net/2019/09/05/kedi-so-this-is-when-you-come-home
Ben non, les kedi n’étaient pas partis, juste un peu raplaplas. Mais ils ont des projets à vous soumettre.
22.06.2019: Deutsche Guerillakämpferin in Kurdistan gefallen (Tageszeitung junge Welt)
▻https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/357649.deutsche-guerillakämpferin-in-kurdistan-gefallen.html
https://d1tr45u6dkwdtq.cloudfront.net/9183/21-06-2019-BEHDINAN-Alman-gerilla-Tuerk-hava-saldirisinda-sehit-duestue-b7a0ebpre.jpg 
https://d1tr45u6dkwdtq.cloudfront.net/9183/21-06-2019-BEHDINAN-Alman-gerilla-Tuerk-hava-saldirisinda-sehit-duestue-09ee31pre.jpg 
Die deutsche Guerillakämpferin Sarah Handelmann (Codename Sara Dorsin) ist am 7. April bei einem türkischen Luftangriff auf die Medya-Verteidigungsgebiete gefallen, wie die Arbeiterpartei Kurdistans (PKK) ihren entlang der türkisch-irakischen Grenze verlaufenden Rückzugsraum nennt. Dies teilten die kurdischen Volksverteidigungskräfte (HPG) am Freitag in einer Erklärung mit und sprachen den Angehörigen ihr Beileid aus.
In der Erklärung heißt es:
»Die Genossin Sara wurde 1985 in Deutschland geboren. Sie wurde in ihrer Jugend mit der Feindseligkeit des kapitalistischen Systems gegen Menschen bekannt gemacht und begann, nach etwas zu suchen. Genossin Sara engagierte sich in mehreren sozialistischen Organisationen und war sehr beeindruckt vom kurdischen Freiheitskampf. Sie kam, um die Vernichtungspolitik zu sehen, die den Kurden aufgezwungen wurde, als ob sie ihrem eigenen Volk angetan worden wäre. 2017 kam Genossin Sara 2017 in die kurdischen Berge, um sich der PKK-Bewegung anzuschließen.
In der Person von Sara Dorsin erinnern wir noch einmal an alle internationalistischen Gefallenen, die als Zeichen der Solidarität der Völker im Befreiungskampf der unterdrückten Völker ihr Leben verloren haben. Wir versprechen, die von ihnen an uns übergebene Fahne der Freiheit in den Sieg zu tragen.«
ANF | Guerillakämpferin Sarah Handelmann bei Luftangriff gefallen
▻https://anfdeutsch.com/frauen/guerillakaempferin-sarah-handelmann-bei-luftangriff-gefallen-12156
Zur Biografie von Sarah Handelmann teilen die HPG mit:
„Unsere Freundin Sara kam 1985 in Deutschland zur Welt. Bereits in jungen Jahren erkannte sie die Asozialität des Kapitalismus und begab sich auf die Suche nach dem Kampf, den sie führen wollte. Sie engagierte sich für eine Vielzahl sozialistischer Organisationen, der kurdische Befreiungskampf beeindruckte Sara besonders. Die Vernichtungspolitik, die dem kurdischen Volk auferlegt wird, empfand sie so, als sei ihr eigenes Volk davon betroffen. Sara war sich der demokratischen Einheit der Völker bewusst und glaubte daran, dass die Befreiung aus den Klauen der kapitalistischen Moderne, die den Menschen verdirbt, die Gesellschaft ausbeutet und in Stücke reißt, in der demokratischen Moderne liegt. Sie glaubte daran, dass die demokratische Moderne eine politisch-moralische Gesellschaft ermöglichen kann. Als Resultat ihrer Suche kam Sara im Jahr 2017 in die Berge Kurdistans, um sich der PKK anzuschließen, deren Grundlage die Ideologie nach einem freien Leben des Vordenkers Abdullah Öcalan ist. In den unendlichen Bergen Kurdistans wurde Sara eine Guerillakämpferin und passte sich sehr schnell an das Leben dort an. In dieser Zeit setzte sie sich intensiv mit der Frauenbefreiungsideologie der kurdischen Bewegung auseinander. Sara nahm ihren Platz in den Reihen der Frauenguerilla YJA-Star ein und knüpfte tiefe Freundschaften zu ihren Genossinnen. Sie war eine besonders beliebte Freundin ihrer Kameradinnen.
Sara entwickelte sich sehr schnell. Besonders im militärischen Bereich machte sie erhebliche Fortschritte. Als moderne zeitgenössische Kämpferin übernahm sie bei der Guerilla die Funktion der Teamkommandantin. Sie erfüllte ihre Aufgaben stets gewissenhaft und war in den Augen ihrer Freundinnen und Freunde eine Führungspersönlichkeit. In jedem Moment ihres Lebens bei der Guerilla kämpfte sie mit aufrichtiger Liebe für die Freiheit. Bis zu ihrem Tod war Sara eine aktive Guerillakommandantin, die ihren Platz im Befreiungskampf Kurdistans einnahm.
Genoss*innen wie Andrea Wolf (Ronahî), Uta Schneiderbanger (Nûdem), Jakob Riemer (Şiyar) und unzählige weitere Freundinnen und Freunde, die Symbole dieser Suche nach Freiheit wurden, kämpfen auch jetzt viele Genoss*innen aus Deutschland und anderen Ländern Europas in unseren Reihen. Auch Sara war ein wichtiger Teil unseres Freiheitsmarschs. Sie war der Ansicht, dass die gesamte Menschheit in Frieden zusammenkommen und ihre Muttersprache sprechend nach ihrer eigenen Kultur und nationalen Werten leben sollte. Sara wollte, dass sich die Gesellschaft auf Grundlage einer demokratischen Nation organisiert, um die Freiheit zu erreichen und ein freies Leben zu führen.
Die geschätzte Familie Handelmann kann nicht stolz genug auf ihre Tochter Sara sein, die ihren Kampf für die Freiheit führte. Angesichts dieses schmerzvollen Verlusts sprechen wir den Angehörigen von unserer Freundin Sara unser aufrichtiges Beileid aus.
In der Person von Sara Dorşîn erinnern wir noch einmal an alle internationalistischen Gefallenen, die als Zeichen der Solidarität der Völker im Befreiungskampf der unterdrückten Völker ihr Leben verloren haben. Wir versprechen, die von ihnen an uns übergebene Fahne der Freiheit in den Sieg zu tragen.”
Le numéro 1, un très beau numéro de la revue
#Nunatak , Revue d’histoires, cultures et #luttes des #montagnes...
Sommaire :
Une sensation d’étouffement/Aux frontières de l’Iran et de l’Irak/Pâturages et Uniformes/La Banda Baudissard/
À ceux qui ne sont responsables de rien/Des plantes dans l’illégalité/Conga no va !/Mundatur culpa labore
La revue est disponible en pdf en ligne (►https://revuenunatak.noblogs.org/numeros), voici l’adresse URL pour télécharger le numéro 1 :
▻https://revuenunatak.noblogs.org/files/2017/03/Nunatak1HiverPrintemps2017.pdf
Je mettrai ci-dessous des mots-clés et citations des articles...
–—
métaliste des numéros recensés sur seenthis :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/926433
Une sensation d’étouffement
Dans un rapport de 2009 émanant de l’Institut d’études de sécurité de l’Union européenne (#IESUE), on peut lire parmi tout un ensemble de préconisations : « [...] les menaces pesant sur ses voies maritimes commerciales, les actes de piraterie en haute mer, les conflits civils et la déstabilisation par la violence de certaines régions ayant des conséquences pour l’Union en termes de flux de migrants ou de réfugiés, la perturbation des canaux d’approvisionnement en ressources ou l’encouragement du terrorisme, la prolifération des armes de destruction massive et d’autres menaces physiques nécessiteront de la part de l’Union une capacité de réaction militaire constante et toujours plus professionnelle ».
L’immigration clandestine est donc perçue comme une « #menace » parmi de nombreuses autres et le traitement requis pour ce problème est militaire. Ce même rapport préconise de renforcer le contrôle aux frontières en procédant à des « opérations d’endiguement » destinées à « protéger les riches du monde contre les tensions et les problèmes des pauvres. Puisque la proportion de la population mondiale vivant dans la misère et la frustration continuera d’être très élevée, les tensions entre ce monde et le monde des riches continueront de s’accentuer, avec les conséquences que cela suppose. Comme il est peu probable que nous ayons supprimé les causes du problème d’ici 2020, en remédiant aux dysfonctionnements dont souffrent les sociétés, nous devrons renforcer nos barrières » (op. cit.). Dès lors, les enjeux qui se cachent derrière la surveillance des frontières et les motivations de la guerre livrée aux exilés tentant d’accéder au sol européen deviennent clairs : maintenir les intérêts du « monde des riches ».
#La_Roya #Roya #vallée_de_la_roya #frontière_sud-alpine #Alpes_maritimes #asile #migrations #réfugiés #contrôles_frontaliers #militarisation_des_frontières
Aux frontières de l’Iran et de l’Irak
Cet entretien est né d’une rencontre. Il aurait pu être réalisé à la
montagne dans un alpage des Écrins où Leïla est bergère à la belle
saison, mais c’est à la terrasse d’un café à Marseille que nous nous
sommes entretenus avec elle. Son projet et ses fréquents voyages au
Başûr, le Kurdistan Irakien, nous ont donné l’envie de parler dans
la revue Nunatak de cette région souvent ignorée en Europe.
Nous nous sommes rencontrés car nous partageons le désir de
comprendre les luttes et résistances qui se déroulent au Kurdistan,
les réalités propres à ce territoire de montagne. Nous nous interrogeons
sur la résonance qu’il peut y avoir entre les luttes menées làbas
et les nôtres, car il nous semble que c’est par la compréhension
et l’échange que les distances qui les séparent peuvent s’amenuiser.
Les combats et la place des femmes nous questionnent particulièrement
dans le contexte de guerre et de répression que connaissent
les Kurdes depuis des dizaines d’années.
Loin d’un discours de spécialiste présentant une implacable analyse
géopolitique, ou d’un folklore militant cherchant à faire vivre au
lointain une idéologie révolutionnaire, nous désirons simplement
apporter un témoignage proche, palpable, où les mots raconter,
écouter, regarder prendraient leur sens.
En tout cas, l’étude qu’elle a faite est remarquable...
Citation :
« La frontière est très militarisée, et tuer des gens à la frontière fait partie de la politique de répression menée contre les Kurdes. C’est une répression très violente. Les gardes-frontières tirent à vue. Il faut comprendre que cette solution de vie autour des passages clandestins a été mise en place suite à la destruction de toutes les autres ressources. C’est très dur pour les gens, on les empêche de vivre et de s’en sortir grâce à la terre. Et quand ils trouvent une solution parallèle, ils se font encore une fois réprimer... Dans tous les villages, il y a des personnes qui sont mortes sous les balles en passant la frontière. Les gardes vont jusque sur les sentiers de montagne, mais la frontière reste encore très poreuse car ils ne peuvent être partout ; la #montagne est une bonne cachette. »
#Kurdes #Kurdistan #Kurdistan_irakien #Irak #déplacement_forcé #histoire #Baas #collectivisation #réforme_agraire #frontière_ouverte #violence #violent_borders #militarisation_des_frontières #frontières #économie_de_frontière #Iran #résistance #grève #répression #femmes #genre #migrations #femmes_migrantes #camps_d'entraînement #peshmerga #Organisation_des_femmes #guerilla #PDKI #Komala #ségrégation_sexuelle #égalité #rapports_de_genre #guérilla #pouvoir #mourir_aux_frontières #morts #décès
Et ce beau concept : #artisan_de_passage
ping @isskein
À ceux qui ne sont responsables de rien
#puces #élevage #surveillance #technologie #RFID #résistance #identification_électronique #élevage #traçabilité #France #colère #sanctions #puce_électronique #étiquetage #primes_européennes #risques_alimentaires #autonomie #responsabilité #liberté #alimentation #bien_commun #libéralisme #gestion #PAC
v. aussi le film documentaire :
#Mouton_2.0 - La puce à l’oreille
►https://seenthis.net/messages/626195
Des plantes dans l’illégalité
#pharmacie #industrie_pharmaceutique #herboristerie #livre_bleu #criminalisation #histoire #médecine #répression #huiles_essentielles #purin_d'ortie #alimentation #sauge #hysope #interdiction #savoirs_populaires #santé #remèdes_naturels #propriété_intellectuelle
ping @fil
Conga no va !
Citation initiale, tirée de Anna Bednik, Extractivisme, Le passager clandestin, 2015:
« Qu’est-ce que l’extractivisme ? C’est un programme pour utiliser la terre et non pour vivre avec elle ; pour extraire ses biens comme matière première à échelle industrielle. Il se fonde sur une prétendue prééminence de l’humain sur le reste de la nature et sur certains humains considérés comme inférieurs (...). Il expulse les personnes de leurs terres et les entasse dans des bidonvilles en périphérie des centres urbains »
ping @albertocampiphoto
Mundatur culpa labore. Laver sa faute par le #travail
#prison #bagne #enfants #Campestre-et-Luc #mineurs #colonie_pénitentiaire #colonies_pénitentiaires_agricoles #agriculture #enfermement
v. aussi
Pourquoi faudrait-il punir ? Sur l’abolition du système pénal
Bien des philanthropes, depuis la création de la prison, luttent pour une amélioration du sort des détenus. C’est d’ailleurs la moindre des choses. On peut indéfiniment réformer et reformer ainsi la prison.
On peut aussi vouloir son abolition, sa suppression pure et simple. Comme on a supprimé les tortures de l’arsenal pénal.
Elle est un supplice, au même titre que la goutte d’eau sur le crâne et tous les supplices qui visent l’énervement.
Elle repose sur l’idée qu’elle doit être dégradante et humiliante : au sens le plus littéral du terme, elle se veut une peine infamante.
Les modernes, malgré les concessions au populisme d’aujourd’hui sur le « tout sécuritaire », s’accordent à la trouver archaïque. Mais on peut s’attendre à ce qu’elle soit remplacée par quelque chose de pire
C’est pourquoi la question essentielle n’est pas celle du comment, mais du pourquoi.
Pourquoi punir ? Pourquoi faudrait-il punir ?
Aux frontières de l’Iran et de l’Irak, Leïla
En faisant mon travail préparatoire, ce que j’ai vu, c’est que dans toutes les statistiques, il y a autant de migrantes que de migrants dans le monde. Mais une fois en Europe, les femmes sont complètement « invisibilisées ». On ne les voit pas dans la rue, on n’en parle pas dans les travaux de recherche, ni dans la sphère médiatique.
Cela m’a amenée à me demander : où sont-elles ? Comment se déplacent-elles ? Pourquoi ne les voit-on pas, alors que l’on voit les hommes ? Les hommes comme les femmes sont en situation très précaire, donc ce n’est pas seulement la précarité qui explique cela. L’idée était d’aller chercher ces réponses à la source, de voir comment ces femmes partent, comment elles pensent leur trajet de migration, comment elles s’organisent pour le départ. Dans ces camps de réfugiés, je les rencontrais alors qu’elles étaient à une étape intermédiaire de leur migration : des femmes qui étaient parties d’Iran, qui s’étaient retrouvées en Irak et dont la plupart voulaient aller en Europe. Elles me racontaient leur départ d’Iran. Je vivais avec elles au quotidien. C’était l’occasion de comprendre, de partager ce moment de recomposition à travers le passage dans les camps, l’attente et tout ce que ça implique. Avec, en toile de fond, la construction d’un autre voyage vers l’Europe qui n’arrive pas toujours
Vu la nature de ses projets et celle des états de la région, il y a probablement tout lieu de penser que Leïla n’est pas son vrai prénom…
Liberté, آزادی
27.05.2019 : Tunceli soll wieder Dersim heißen (Tageszeitung junge Welt)
▻https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/355564.t%C3%BCrkei-tunceli-soll-wieder-dersim-hei%C3%9Fen.html
Der Namensstreit ist ein Politikum, denn 1935 hatte die Regierung in Ankara im Zuge ihrer Assimilationspolitik gegen die nichttürkischen Bevölkerungsgruppen den Namen der alevitisch-kurdisch geprägten Provinz per Gesetz in den türkischen Namen Tunceli (Bronzefaust) geändert. Unter dem Vorwand, einen Aufstand niederschlagen zu müssen, wurden in den folgenden Jahren Zehntausende alevitische Kurden von der Armee getötet oder in andere Landesteile deportiert. Dabei wurde auch Giftgas eingesetzt, das Staatspräsident Mustafa Kemal Atatürk persönlich aus Nazideutschland hatte liefern lassen, wie die Tageszeitung Dersim Gazetesi vor einigen Tagen unter Berufung auf Dokumente aus dem Staatsarchiv berichtet hatte. Aus Deutschland stammten auch die beim Abwurf der Gasbomben eingesetzten Heinkel-Kampfflugzeuge.
Neben der Umbenennung der Stadt hat der Bürgermeister angeordnet, dass kommunale Dienstleistungen in Dersim künftig nicht mehr nur auf Türkisch, sondern auch in den kurdischen Sprachen Kurmanci und Zazaki angeboten werden. Mit diesem Beschluss tritt Macoglu, der bei der Kommunalwahl im März zum ersten kommunistischen Bürgermeister einer Provinzhauptstadt gewählt wurde, in die Fußstapfen seiner Vorgänger von der prokurdischen Linkspartei HDP. Deren Bürgermeister waren 2016 per Regierungsdekret abgesetzt und unter Terrorismus- und Separatismusvorwürfen in Untersuchungshaft genommen wurden. Ein an ihrer Stelle eingesetzter Zwangsverwalter hatte gemäß der türkischen Verfassung alle Sprachen außer dem Türkischen aus der Stadtverwaltung verbannen lassen.
Détail personnel intéressant : d’après le récit de mon père toute la petite famille a déménagé à Ankara plus ou moins au moment des événements décrits dans l’article. Pour l’époque c’était un long voyage plein d’aventures avec l’Orient Express jusqu’à Ankara. La famille rentrait à Berlin après un séjour plus court qu’intialement prévu. Mon père racontait que ma grand-mère n’appréciait pas l’éloignement de Berlin. Sachant que le bureau de mon grand-père se trouvait dans le nouveau ministère de l’aviation à Wilhelmstraße et qu’il allait partir en Espagne en 1936/37 on devine la raison due séjour en Turquie dont il n’avait mis au courant personne. Cette nouvelle information sera utile pour mes recherches dans les archives allemandes.
Orient-Express, 1.4 L’âge d’or de l’entre-deux-guerres (1919-1939)
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient-Express#L'%C3%A2ge_d'or_de_l'entre-deux-guerres_(1919-1939)
Dans les années 1930, l’Orient-Express consiste en une famille de trains de luxe reliant l’Europe de l’Ouest à l’Europe de l’Est et du Sud. Il y a trois trajets reliant Paris et Calais (France) à Istanbul (Turquie), Athènes (Grèce) et Bucarest (Roumanie) : l’Orient-Express, le Simplon-Orient-Express et l’Arlberg-Orient-Express ; auxquels s’ajoutent des liaisons vers Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) et Bruxelles (Belgique) avec l’Ostende-Vienne-Orient-Express, vers Berlin (Allemagne) et Prague (République tchèque) avec le Berlin-Budapest-Orient-Express
La version anglaise de Wikipedia mentionne la coopération entre les armées de l’air de l’Allemange et de Turqui à une époque quand l’arme se trouvait au début de son développement. Il n’y a jamais eu en Turquie une intevention allemande comme en Espagne, mais on entretenait les bonne relations nouées pendant la première guerre mondiale.
Turkish Air Force - Wikipedia
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Air_Force
The fleet size reached its apex in December 1916, when the Ottoman aviation had 90 active combat aircraft. Some early help for the Ottoman Air Force came from the Imperial German Fliegertruppe (known by that name before October 1916), with future Central Powers 13-victory flying ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke flying with the Turks early in World War I as just one example.
Luftwaffe (Wehrmacht) – Wikipedia
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftwaffe_(Wehrmacht)
Erlass des Führers und Reichskanzlers über die Reichsluftwaffe. 2, 1935, in: Bundesarchiv R43 II/127a.
#Allemagne #Turquie #Kurdistan #histoire #aviation #Reichsluftwaffe
No Friend but the Mountains. The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee
In 2013, Kurdish journalist #Behrouz_Boochani sought asylum in Australia but was instead illegally imprisoned in the country’s most notorious detention centre on Manus Island. He has been there ever since. This book is the result.
Behrouz Boochani spent nearly five years typing passages of this book one text at a time from a secret mobile phone in prison. Compiled and translated from Farsi, they form an incredible story of how escaping political persecution in Iran, he ended up trapped as a stateless person. This vivid, gripping portrait of his years of incarceration and exile shines devastating light on the fates of so many people as borders close around the world.
No Friend but the Mountains is both a brave act of witness and a moving testament to the humanity of all people, in the most extreme of circumstances.
Une chose m’intrigue... pourquoi la #montagne dans le titre?
Australia’s Shame
Let us suppose that I am the heir of an enormous estate. Stories about my generosity abound. And let us suppose that you are a young man, ambitious but in trouble with the authorities in your native land. You make a momentous decision: you will set out on a voyage across the ocean that will bring you to my doorstep, where you will say, I am here—feed me, give me a home, let me make a new life!
Unbeknown to you, however, I have grown tired of strangers arriving on my doorstep saying I am here, take me in—so tired, so exasperated that I say to myself: Enough! No longer will I allow my generosity to be exploited! Therefore, instead of welcoming you and taking you in, I consign you to a desert island and broadcast a message to the world: Behold the fate of those who presume upon my generosity by arriving on my doorstep unannounced!
This is, more or less, what happened to Behrouz Boochani. Targeted by the Iranian regime for his advocacy of Kurdish independence, Boochani fled the country in 2013, found his way to Indonesia, and was rescued at the last minute from the unseaworthy boat in which he was trying to reach Australia. Instead of being given a home, he was flown to one of the prisons in the remote Pacific run by the Commonwealth of Australia, where he remains to this day.
Boochani is not alone. Thousands of asylum-seekers have suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Australians. The point of the fable of the rich man and the supplicant is the following: Is it worse to treat thousands of people with exemplary inhumanity than to treat a single man in such a way? If it is indeed worse, how much worse is it? Thousands of times? Or does the calculus of numbers falter when it comes to matters of good and evil?
Whatever the answer, the argument against Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers can be made as trenchantly on the basis of a single case as on that of a thousand, and Boochani has provided exactly that case. Under atrocious conditions he has managed to write and publish a record of his experiences (experiences yet to be concluded), a record that will certainly leave his jailers gnashing their teeth.
Given the fact that the foundational event of the Commonwealth of Australia was the arrival on the island continent’s east coast of a fleet of uninvited vessels captained by James Cook; given further that since the end of World War II Australia has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of them from Europe but many from Asia and Africa too, it is hard to comprehend the dogged hostility of the Australian public to the latest wave of refugees fleeing strife in the Middle East, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent, and northeast Africa. To call their hostility racist or xenophobic explains little. Its roots lie further back in time, suggests the historian Jane Haggis:
The sense of victimhood, of being exiled—unwelcome at home, by virtue of being a convict, an ill-paid worker or an economically precarious tenant farmer…and of having struggled too hard to earn the land…meant Australia never totally embraced the discourse of humanitarianism and of human rights that came to define one sense of the Western self during the twentieth century…. The sense of exile, of expulsion from Europe to the bottom of the world, of being victims rather than members of God’s elect, [shapes] Australia and Australians’ historic sense of themselves as a national community [and] feeds a hyper-vigilance to maintain…“First World privilege.”
Hostility to refugees is clearly to be seen in the positions taken by both main political parties, which respond to protests against the way they treat refugees with the mantra “We will put the people smugglers out of business, we will end the drownings at sea,” refusing bluntly to address what is unique about their common policy: that people are to be punished for seeking asylum, and that the punishment will be and is meant to be as harsh as possible, visible for all the world to see.
Poll after poll attests that a majority of Australians back stringent border controls. Fed by the right-wing media, the public has swallowed the argument that there is an orderly immigration queue that boat people could have joined but chose not to; further, that most boat people are not genuine refugees but “economic migrants”—as if fleeing persecution and seeking a better life elsewhere were mutually exclusive motives.
Under the uniquely complex, quota-based system that Australia follows for dealing with humanitarian cases, there is indeed an orderly queue for applicants waiting to be processed in camps overseas supervised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the system for processing these humanitarian cases does indeed function smoothly if somewhat slowly, though when we bear in mind that, by the latest count, there are 70 million persons displaced from their homes worldwide, Australia’s quota of about 12,500 humanitarian acceptances per year is modest, well short of Canada’s (28,000). As for the argument that boat people are trying to jump the queue, the fact is that—until the policy changed so that arriving by boat effectively nullified any future application for asylum—the actions of asylum-seekers who arrived on Australian shores without papers and were subsequently found to be “genuine” had no effect on the quota for acceptances from the camps. Simply stated, boat people have never been part of any queue.
Most of those who head for Australia’s back door do so via Indonesia, where they spend as little time as they can: Indonesia routinely arrests sans-papiers and sends them back to their country of origin. At the height of the boat traffic to Australia in 2009–2011, some five thousand people a year were setting sail from ports in southern Indonesia, in leaky boats provided by smugglers. No official figures are available for deaths at sea, but Monash University’s Australian Border Deaths database estimates a total of some two thousand since the year 2000, with a spike of over four hundred in 2012.
The preventive measures undertaken by the Australian navy to head off asylum-seekers are shrouded in secrecy; therefore we do not know how many of them have persisted in embarking for Australia since a harsh new policy of interning and processing them offshore was put into practice in 2013, but there is every reason to believe that the number has fallen drastically. It would appear that when the navy intercepts a refugee vessel, it immediately transfers the occupants to a disposable boat with a minimum of fuel, tows it back into Indonesian waters, and casts it off.
Australia’s treatment of refugees is constrained by a number of treaties. First among these is the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, ratified in 1954 though with a number of reservations. This convention confirms the right (already enunciated in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948) of any victim of persecution to seek and enjoy asylum. It also binds signatories not to return asylum-seekers to the countries from which they have fled, a requirement known as non-refoulement.
While adhering to non-refoulement, Australia has over the years exploited two lacunae in the convention, namely that it does not confer on an asylum-seeker the legal right to enter the country where asylum is sought, and that it does not oblige the country where asylum is sought to grant asylum. Successive Australian administrations have therefore taken the position—validated by Australian courts—that a person who enters Australian territorial waters without the requisite papers is in Australia illegally, whether or not that person has come to seek asylum.
The question of asylum was repeatedly debated in the United Nations in the 1960s and 1970s. Australia voted alongside its allies the United States and the United Kingdom in favor of the right of asylum, while consistently reserving its position on the actual admission of asylum-seekers. In 1977 it spelled out that position: Australia “will wish to retain its discretion to determine ultimately who can enter Australian territory and under what conditions they remain.”
Christmas Island, a sparsely populated island south of Java, was incorporated into Australia in 1958 despite being some nine hundred miles from the Australian mainland. It is to Christmas Island that most boat people seeking Australian asylum steer. To forestall them, the Australian parliament legislated in 2001 that for the purposes of the Refugee Convention, Christmas Island will be deemed to be not part of Australia. Once a refugee vessel has entered the waters of Christmas Island, its occupants are thus both illegally in Australia and also not yet in Australia. The Australian navy is empowered to detain such “illegal non-citizens” and remove them to a location outside Australia, where they may be held indefinitely, without recourse to judicial review.
Because Australia does not have a bill of rights, challenges to its refugee policies on the basis of international law have tended to fail in the nation’s courts. They have succeeded only when it has been proved that provisions of the country’s Migration Act have not been met. However, such court rulings have typically been followed by appropriate adjustments to the Migration Act.
As if this were not enough, the government legislated in 2014 to strike from the Migration Act almost all references to the 1951 Refugee Convention. The revised act states that “it is irrelevant whether Australia has any non-refoulement obligations in respect of an unlawful non-citizen,” i.e., an asylum-seeker. The legality of Australia’s asylum policy is thus, in the eyes of the government and, it would appear, of the courts as well, ironclad.
Australia is a vast, sparsely populated continent. Since it became an independent nation in 1901, it has had to manage two contending forces: a need to increase its population and a fear that its way of life might be undermined or swamped or corroded (the metaphors are legion) if too many strangers are allowed in.
In the early years, the latter fear expressed itself in frankly racial terms. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, the cornerstone of the policy commonly known as White Australia, was aimed in the first place at blocking immigration from Asia. A generation later the focus shifted to European Jews. When he came to power in 1933, Hitler declared that the only future for Germany’s Jews lay in emigration. But like other Western countries, Australia refused mass Jewish immigration. At an international conference held in Évian in 1938 to discuss the fate of Europe’s Jews, the leader of the Australian delegation made his country’s position clear: “As we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.”
The truth is that Australia did have a racial problem, and had had one ever since British colonists established themselves on the continent. The problem was that the colonists held themselves to be intrinsically (in the language of the day, racially) superior to Aboriginal Australians, and did not regard this conviction as a problem. Their unproblematic racism—a problem that was not a problem—easily extended itself to Jews, who might be white but were not the right shade of white.
The Évian conference confirmed that the traditional countries of settlement—the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina—would continue to the end to resist large-scale Jewish immigration. By the time the doors out of Europe closed in 1939, Australia had accepted some 10,000 Jewish refugees, a respectable quota by comparison with other Western countries, but minuscule in the larger picture.
World War II, the redrawing of boundaries that followed it, and the flight of populations left millions of Europeans displaced. The 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention of 1951 were intended to address the problem of these displaced persons (DPs). Between 1947 and 1952 Australia took in some 170,000 European refugees. At first the government gave priority to candidates who fit the physical stereotype of the white Australian, for instance people from the Baltic lands. But as the DP camps emptied, and as public opinion softened, migrants began to be accepted from Greece, Italy, Croatia, and other Southern European countries. Refugees from Communist regimes were looked on favorably: Czech dissidents fleeing the Russians in 1968; Vietnamese boat people after the fall of Saigon in 1975; Chinese students after the massacre on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Gradually a nation began to emerge that was no longer quite so Anglo-Celtic in its ethnicity.
Since the 1990s, however, refugee policy has again hardened, and has been complicated by the rise of Islamist terrorism. On August 26, 2001, shortly before the attack on the Twin Towers, a Norwegian vessel, the Tampa, picked up 438 passengers (mostly Afghan Hazaras) from a foundering boat and anchored near Christmas Island. The Tampa was soon boarded by Australian commandos, while the Australian prime minister announced that backdoor asylum-seekers would from then on be processed not on the mainland but in offshore facilities run by Australia in yet-to-be-decided third countries. After September 11, the refugees on the Tampa suddenly became Muslim boat people, and as Muslims became suspected terrorists. From then on, in the politics of the right, asylum-seekers have been tarred with the brush of terrorism. From that date too, broad support for the doctrine of human rights began to wane, not only in Australia but in Western democracies in general—witness Guantánamo.
The practice of offshore processing announced in 2001 was maintained until the number of boat arrivals had dwindled to such an extent that the camps could be closed. However, soon after this was done, in 2004, boats began to arrive again. Why? Because refugees had simply been biding their time, waiting for Australia to relax its guard? Or because as the civil war in Sri Lanka intensified, thousands of Tamils were fleeing for their lives? Which was the determining factor: the pull of Australia or the push of world events?
As the number of boat arrivals grew, the authorities became more and more nervous. Australia had to be made a less attractive destination. A panel of experts recommended what it called a “circuit breaker”: the resumption of offshore processing together with an end to compassionate border control.
Agreements were concluded in 2013 with Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the tiny island state of Nauru. The old camps would be reopened. These two countries would process the protection claims of people arriving in Australia by boat and would resettle them either on their own territory or in a third country. Australia could then argue that it was not responsible for the ultimate fate of the asylum-seekers, even though the camps would be financed and run by the Australian government through private contractors.
Manus Island belongs to an archipelago that forms part of PNG. It lies 650 miles north of the Australian mainland; the entire archipelago has a population of about 60,000. Between 2013 and 2016, when the PNG Supreme Court ruled that imprisoning asylum-seekers had been illegal from the start, several thousand people passed through the camps on Manus. However, when in 2017 the PNG police tried to close the camps, most of the occupants—some six hundred men—refused to leave, claiming to fear for their safety. Water and electricity were cut off, and a siege commenced that is vividly described in Boochani’s book. After a month, resistance crumbled, and the detainees were moved into compounds elsewhere on the island, where they have freedom of movement though, without papers, they cannot leave PNG.
Nauru, nearly two thousand miles from Australia, is one of the world’s smallest nation-states, with a mere 11,000 inhabitants. Since its deposits of rock phosphate gave out a decade or two ago, its economic viability has depended on money-laundering and on the largesse of foreign patrons. On Nauru, prisoners have been held in what are called “open facilities.” However, since the island is tiny (eight square miles), the advantage is slight.
The UNHCR has been extremely critical of Australia’s offshore policies. In 2017 it concluded that PNG and Nauru were intrinsically unsuitable as resettlement homes, given “the impossibility of local integration.” In other words, Papuans and Nauruans do not want refugees living among them, and refugees do not want to live in PNG or Nauru. New Zealand has offered to take 150 of the inmates, but Australia has vetoed this offer on the grounds that former detainees might make their way from New Zealand to Australia, thereby weakening the deterrent power of Australian policy.
The operation of the camps was shrouded from the beginning under a blanket of secrecy. Inmates were to be known not by name but by number; circulating photographs of them was forbidden. For information on life in the camps, we have to rely on prisoners like Boochani and on those Australian doctors and social workers who have defied legislation that made it a criminal offense to report what they had witnessed.
On the basis of such evidence, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Manus and Nauru are not just processing centers but punishment camps where detainees—“clients” in the jargon of the bureaucracy—serve indeterminate or even indefinite sentences for the offense of trying to enter Australia without papers. The attitude of the Australian guards (“client service officers”), many of them veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, seems to be unremitting hostility, fueled by suspicions that among their clientele are Islamic terrorists masquerading as refugees. The local populations, Nauruan or Papuan, also seem to regard the refugees with an unfriendly eye. In 2014 the Manus camp was invaded by Papuan police and civilians who assaulted the inmates, killing one of them.
In the first year and a half after the agreement with Nauru and PNG, over three thousand people, including hundreds of children, were consigned to offshore detention. A pediatrician visiting the island camps reported a range of troubled behavior among children there: bed-wetting, nightmares, defiant behavior, separation anxiety, withdrawal, regression in speech, mutism, stuttering. Australia’s human rights commissioner concluded that the camps were too violent and unsafe to house children. The entire practice of putting children behind razor wire was damned by a UN special rapporteur. In the face of public disquiet, the Australian authorities began to remove children and their parents to the mainland. By February 2019 the last of them had either been resettled in the US or brought to Australia on an explicitly temporary basis.
Refugee policy was not an issue in the recent elections for the Australian federal parliament, which were won and lost on arcane issues in the tax code. News that Australian voters had returned to power the same set of jailers responsible for their misery provoked a spate of self-harm and suicide attempts among the remaining detainees. An Indian who tried to set himself alight was treated for burns, then charged with attempting suicide. Boochani reports that most of the refugees left on Manus have fallen into a state of despair and no longer leave their rooms. To date, fourteen prisoners, most of them in their twenties, have died on Nauru and Manus, some by their own hand. They died because the camps were unhealthy, dangerous, and destructive not only of their psychic stability but of their very humanity.
For years there has been a drumbeat of protest from within Australia against the demonization of asylum-seekers. One appeal came from Tim Winton, among Australia’s most widely read writers:
Prime Minister, turn us back from this path to brutality. Restore us to our best selves. Turn back from piling trauma upon the traumatised. It grinds innocent people to despair and self-harm and suicide. It ruins the lives of children. It shames us. And it poisons the future. Give these people back their faces, their humanity. Do not avert your gaze and don’t hide them from us.
Not everyone shares Winton’s sentiments. After being shown a poster targeting aspiring asylum-seekers that showed a boat in rough waters with the caption “NO WAY. YOU WILL NOT MAKE AUSTRALIA HOME,” President Trump tweeted, “Much can be learned!” Australia’s practices of imprisoning refugees and turning back boats have been applauded by the European right and in some quarters mimicked.
At the peak of the influx of boat people, Manus housed 1,353 prisoners and Nauru 1,233. For Nauru, the camp business has been particularly lucrative. For each detainee it houses on behalf of Australia, Nauru earns about US$1,400 a year in visa fees. Holding a prisoner offshore costs Australia about US$38,000 per year. If the same prisoner were brought to the Australian mainland while his or her claim was being processed, the cost would fall to US$7,000. Persisting with the offshore camps has clearly been a point of honor with the Australians, no matter what the expense.
In the last days of the Obama administration, it was announced that the United States would accept up to 1,250 refugees from Manus and Nauru. When President Trump took office in January 2017, the then Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, called to pay his respects and apprise the new incumbent of the agreement. President Trump was understandably baffled. Why could Australia not house the refugees itself? Turnbull replied:
The only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here.
As Turnbull artlessly reveals, there is something arbitrary in welcoming people who have papers while treating people without papers not only badly but with spectacular heartlessness. Commentators have pointed to the contrived quality of the distinction and hinted at a motive behind it: that the sans-papiers are being offered up to the xenophobes and nativists to vent their rage on, while government and business are left free to run an orderly system of importing skilled migrants.
With evident reluctance, President Trump has honored the deal made by the Obama administration. As of April 2019, over five hundred refugees had been resettled in the US, with further departures expected, while 265 applications had been rejected on character grounds. According to Boochani’s recent count, there are still 370 asylum-seekers on Manus, seventy of whom had been accepted by the US and are ready to leave. Sixty men on Nauru have been accepted, leaving about two hundred on the island. The prisoners rejected by the US provide Australia with a legal headache. It cannot send them back to their countries of origin without violating its non-refoulement obligations, yet if no third country will accept them, they will find themselves in indefinite detention, in violation of international human rights law.
As a youngster, Behrouz Boochani tells us, he wanted to join the Kurdish guerrillas in their war of liberation but was not brave enough to take the final step: “To this very day I don’t know if I have a peace-loving spirit or if I was just frightened.” Instead he turned to a career in writing.
About the journalism that got him into trouble with the authorities and his subsequent flight from Iran he has little to say. At Tehran airport he masquerades as a casual tourist, carrying nothing but a few changes of clothes and a book of poetry. In Indonesia he spends a miserable forty days hiding from the police, waiting for a place on a boat. The boat that he boards is barely seaworthy: he and his fellow fugitives spend most of their time bailing out water. They are picked up by an Indonesian fishing vessel, transferred to a British freighter, then finally arrested by the Australian navy and flown to Manus Island.
Boochani understands at once that he and his companions have become hostages, to be used “to strike fear into others, to scare people so they won’t come to Australia.” His first impression of his new home is that it is “beautiful…nothing like the island hell that [the Australians] tried to scare us with.” Then, as he steps off the plane, he is hit by the suffocating humidity and stifling heat. Mosquitoes buzz everywhere.
No Friend But the Mountains provides a wholly engrossing account of the first four years that Boochani spent on Manus, up to the time when the prison camp was closed and the prisoners resettled elsewhere on the island. Just as absorbing is his analysis of the system that reigns in the camp, a system imposed by the Australian authorities but autonomous in the sense that it holds the jailers as well as the prisoners in its grip.
The aim of the system is to break the will of the prisoners and make them accept refoulement. It works by fostering animosities among them, eroding solidarity and leaving them feeling isolated. The simplest of means are used to create paranoia. The electricity running the fans that provide relief from the insufferable heat is switched on and off for no reason. There is drinking water, but it is always lukewarm. Occasionally chilled fruit juice appears, but according to no detectable schedule. With nothing else to do, prisoners become obsessed with finding patterns in these random events: “A twisted system governs the prison, a deranged logic that confines the mind of the prisoner, an extremely oppressive form of governance that the prisoner internalises.”
New rules and regulations are introduced from week to week, for which no one will accept responsibility: “No person who is a part of the system can ever provide an answer—neither the officers nor the other employees…. All they can say is, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just following orders.’” The daily routine includes four body-checks. The eyes of the Australian guards who carry out the searches are “cold, barbaric, hateful.”
Boochani’s fellow prisoners come from all over the world: Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Iraq, Kurdistan. Having to live in close proximity with strangers becomes a torment. He withdraws further and further into himself.
Moral standards deteriorate on all sides. Now and then the mango trees that surround the camp drop their fruit within the perimeter. Even Kurds, normally renowned for their hospitality, pounce on the fruit and devour it without sharing.
The toilets become a place of refuge where a prisoner can be by himself and scream his lungs out. But they also become a place of self-harm and suicide. Boochani records a terrifying episode as the prisoners witness guards removing the body of a man who had slit his wrists with a razor. Among the onlookers he detects a pulsating excitement: “Their responses reveal an attraction to the thrills of a night of blood…. The scene is like a festival: a festival of blood, a festival of the dead.” For some prisoners, self-harm becomes “a kind of cultural practice,” a way of gaining respect. “The faces of those who have self-harmed show peace, a profound peace akin to ecstasy, akin to euphoria.”
Boochani’s narrative reaches a climax when in October 2017 the PNG authorities try to close down the prison camp. Two weeks of nonviolent protest culminate in bloody warfare. Boochani is thrilled by the militancy of his comrades: “For the first time the prisoners did not feel oppressed by the fences. For the first time the rules and regulations meant nothing…. A bond of brotherhood emerged among the prisoners in this fierce movement, performed in the theatre of war for all to see.”
A prefatory note to the book informs us that strict measures have been taken to conceal the identities of detainees. The characters “are not individuals who are disguised…. Their identities are entirely manufactured. They are composite characters.” Boochani’s wish to protect his fellow detainees from reprisal is understandable, but it is nonetheless a pity that we are given no reliable facts about them. Was Boochani an exception, for example, in having a university education? And what led these people to undertake the perilous voyage to Australia, of all places?
Boochani is clearly a loner. Oppressed by the meaningless clamor of prison life, he longs “to isolate [himself] and create that which is poetic and visionary.” He flirts with the idea of himself as a poet-prophet, but it is not clear what he might be prophesying. By his own confession, he is not a brave man, yet it is clear that in those desperate days at sea he behaved with great courage. His motive for seeking asylum in Australia remains unexplored. As autobiography, No Friend is not the summing up of a life but a work in progress, the absorbing record of a life-transforming episode whose effects on his inner self the writer is still trying to plumb.
It is significant that the medium Boochani chooses for his story is a mixed one: analytic prose on the one hand, traditional Kurdish folk-ballad on the other. He writes:
The amazement and horror felt during the nights on Manus has the power to thrust everyone back into their long distant pasts. These nights uncover many years of tears deep in our hearts and open old wounds…they draw out the bitter truth; they force the prisoners to self-prosecute. Prisoners are driven to crying tears of bitter sorrow.
Getting No Friend But the Mountains off the island and into the hands of readers in Australia was an achievement in itself. The text was typed in Farsi on a cell phone that Boochani kept hidden in his mattress, and then surreptitiously dispatched, one text message at a time, to a collaborator in the outside world.
Boochani’s translator, Omid Tofighian, provides an afterword containing useful information about the genesis of the book and Boochani’s place in the Iranian and Kurdish literary traditions. It is as though, to save himself from the madness of the camp, Boochani had to draw upon not only his innate creativity, not only his immersion in Kafka and Beckett, but also submerged memories of “the cold mountains of Kurdistan” and the songs of resistance sung there. (Here the title of the book becomes relevant.)
If we approach No Friend as if it were a conventional refugee narrative or refugee memoir, Tofighian tells us, we misread it profoundly:
In contrast to the thriving “refugee industry” that promotes stories to provide exposure and information and attempts to create empathy…Behrouz recounts stories in order to produce new knowledge and to construct a philosophy that unpacks and exposes systematic torture and the border-industrial complex. His intention has always been to hold a mirror up to the system, dismantle it, and produce a historical record to honour those who have been killed and everyone who is still suffering.
As for Tofighian’s own contribution, “translation [is] for me…a duty to history and a strategy for positioning the issue of indefinite detention of refugees deep within Australia’s collective memory.”
Tofighian contrasts the greater island of Australia with the lesser island of Manus:
One island kills vision, creativity and knowledge—it imprisons thought. The other island fosters vision, creativity and knowledge—it is a land where the mind is free. The first island is the settler-colonial state called Australia, and the prisoners are the settlers. The second island contains Manus Prison, and knowledge resides there with the incarcerated refugees.
This is a bold and persuasive claim: that through their experience on the island the prisoners have absorbed an understanding of how power works in the world, whereas their jailers remain locked in complacent ignorance. The claim rests on an extended conception of what knowledge can consist in: knowledge can be absorbed directly into the suffering body and thence transfigure the self. The prisoners know more than the jailers do, even if they do not have words for what they know. As Boochani puts it, the prisoners
have modified their perception and understanding of life, transformed their interpretation of existence…. They have changed so much—they have transfigured into different beings…. This has occurred for everyone…. They have become distinctly creative humans, they have unprecedented creative capacities…. This is incredible, it is phenomenal to witness.
Tofighian’s afterword upends the image of the translator as the humble, invisible helpmeet of the author. Not only does he present himself, along with two other Iranian colleagues, as a full collaborator in the project, but he also—somewhat hectoringly—gives instructions on how to approach the book: not as an affecting record of suffering and tribulation but as a “decolonial intervention,” “a decolonial text, representing a decolonial way of thinking and doing,” written to spur us “to resist the colonial mindset that is driving Australia’s detention regime.” Boochani supports this mode of reading when he identifies himself less as a writer than as a political scientist who has chosen to employ the language of literature.
The question is, how novel and how valuable is Boochani’s analysis of what he calls the “intersecting social systems of domination and oppression” that reinforce each other in the prison? That people who run prisons try to break down the solidarity of prison populations by encouraging mistrust of all by all and diverting the inmates’ attention to trivia is hardly news. What has not been done before, claims Tofighian, is to connect the warped psychic regime of the prison with “Australian colonial history and fundamental factors plaguing contemporary Australian society, culture and politics.”
This is, to my mind, an empty claim. The book contains no analysis at all of contemporary Australia, a country that Boochani—and who can blame him?—wishes never to set foot in. No doubt the Australian guards at the camp detested the prisoners and wished them ill; but that is true of many prison guards vis-à-vis many prisoners. What is more of a mystery is why so many Australians wish refugees ill. To answer this question one needs to know a great deal more about Australian history, the tensions within Australian society, and the maneuverings of Australia’s political parties than Boochani, isolated on his island, has been able to inquire into.
In May 1994, during the first session of the parliament of the newly liberated South Africa, Nelson Mandela read into the record a poem written in 1960 by the Afrikaans writer Ingrid Jonker (1933–1965). The poem mourns the death of a child shot by police during a protest meeting and foretells his resurrection. Mandela read the poem as a gesture of reconciliation with white Afrikaners, who were dubious about how welcome they would be in the new South Africa. “She was both an Afrikaner and an African,” Mandela said of Jonker.
There is an aspect of Jonker’s poem that few of the parliamentarians listening to Mandela, or indeed Mandela himself, chose to take seriously. The poem ends with the lines: “The child, become a man, treks through the whole of Africa. The child, become a giant, travels across the entire world, without a pass.” The pass to which Jonker refers is the hated internal passport that black Africans were required to carry, without which apartheid as an administrative system would have collapsed. The meeting at which the child was killed was held to protest against having to carry passes; now, in 1994, the reborn child strides unstoppably across the world, disdaining a pass. Not only does Jonker’s poem look forward to the defeat of apartheid; it also looks forward to a day when the borders of the nation-state will crumble before the march of a free people.
The new government headed by Mandela never for a minute considered abolishing or even questioning the nation’s borders, as defined years earlier by the erstwhile colonial power, Britain. Liberated or not, any child who treks through Africa without a pass will be stopped when he arrives at the South African frontier.
Despite its teetering economy, South Africa remains attractive to migrants. Of the 58 million people residing within its borders, some three million are immigrants of various degrees of legality, half of them from Zimbabwe. To obtain a visa that entitles him or her to work in South Africa, a Zimbabwean needs a passport, a letter from an employer, an address in South Africa, and proof of funds. Most find these requirements impossible to meet. As for getting accepted as a refugee, this is complicated by the reluctance of the South African government to concede that political repression exists in Zimbabwe. Thus, papers or no papers, Zimbabweans have for years been crossing South Africa’s inadequately monitored northern border unannounced, at a rate of some seven hundred a day.
Immigration is a burning issue in South Africa. Politicians blame foreign migrants for high crime rates, for overrunning the cities, for exploiting the social welfare system, for taking jobs from the locals. In 2008 there were outbursts of mass violence against foreigners that left scores dead. The South African authorities have responded to the challenge of undocumented migration with sporadic roundups and mass deportations. The exercise has been largely futile. Most of those expelled promptly turn around and come back.
I mention the case of South Africa, not untypical in the postcolonial world, to illustrate what can happen when—unlike Australia—a country lacks the will and/or the means to close its borders to less affluent neighbors. Zimbabweans and other African migrants who find their way to South Africa reside there only precariously. They are at the receiving end of resentment and sometimes of violence from the locals. They are ill advised to appeal to the police for protection. On the other hand, they have yet to find themselves dispatched to a godforsaken island as punishment for entering the country through the back door.
Cross-border migration is a fact of life in today’s world, and numbers will only increase as the earth heats up, former pastures turn to desert, and islands are swallowed by the sea. There are messy but humane—or at least human—ways of reacting to this world-historical phenomenon, just as there are neat but inhuman ways.
▻https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/09/26/australias-shame
–-----
Et un peu plus sur le lien avec la montagne...
It is as though, to save himself from the madness of the camp, Boochani had to draw upon not only his innate creativity, not only his immersion in Kafka and Beckett, but also submerged memories of “the cold mountains of Kurdistan” and the songs of resistance sung there. (Here the title of the book becomes relevant.)
Behrouz Boochani, voice of Manus Island refugees, is free in New Zealand
Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist – a multiple award-winner for documenting life in Australia’s offshore detention system – has left Papua New Guinea
▻https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/14/behrouz-boochani-free-voice-manus-island-refugees-new-zealand-australia
Behrouz Boochani, brutalised but not beaten by Manus, says simply: ’I did my best’
After six hellish years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, Boochani reflects on the country that rejected him, his new-found freedom and the friends he left behind.
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/16/behrouz-boochani-manus-says-simply-i-did-my-best
Behrouz Boochani. La nostra resistenza pacifica è più forte della vostra violenza di Stato
Behrouz Boochani è tornato in libertà nel corso di questa intervista. Lo scrittore curdo è stato tenuto prigioniero per sei anni in Papua Nuova Guinea dal governo australiano.
La sua resistenza pacifica ha vinto. Dopo oltre sei anni di prigionia, traumi e torture, lo scrittore curdo Behrouz Boochani è libero. La splendida notizia è arrivata mentre questa intervista era in corso di svolgimento. Fino al 12 novembre, infatti, l’autore era confinato in uno dei luoghi più remoti al mondo, la Papua Nuova Guinea, dove l’Australia ha imprigionato migliaia di richiedenti asilo per quasi vent’anni. Ora Boochani si trova in Nuova Zelanda e a breve, probabilmente, partirà per il Nordamerica. “Lo scorso settembre è stato liberato il centro di detenzione di Manus Island e siamo stati trasferiti in alcuni appartamenti della capitale di Papua, Port Moresby. Entro fine novembre altri di noi dovrebbero essere liberati, ma 46 persone restano in carcere in condizioni durissime. Siamo molto preoccupati”, aveva affermato pochi giorni prima della liberazione.
Questi sei anni di prigionia Behrouz Boochani li ha raccontati in un libro che è diventato un caso letterario internazionale. Nessun amico se non le montagne, uscito nel 2018 in inglese e pubblicato quest’anno in Italia da add editore, si è diffuso nel mondo come un grido inaspettato. Ha rivelato il dolore dei profughi lungo la rotta asiatica verso l’Australia. Ha scavato nelle storie di chi con lui si è nascosto nella foresta indonesiana e ha sfidato l’oceano sulle barche dei trafficanti, finendo in carceri finanziate dal governo di Canberra. Ha evocato la disperazione della sua gente, ovvero i perseguitati curdi in Iran. Ha ricordato come nel 2013 lui, giornalista e regista di 30 anni, sia stato costretto a scappare dal suo Paese, dopo che le Guardie della rivoluzione islamica (i pasdaran) avevano fatto irruzione nella sede di “Werya”, la rivista curda che aveva fondato. Quel giorno undici suoi colleghi furono arrestati.
“Se i governi non rispettano i migranti, mettono a rischio le democrazie”
Con la sua opera letteraria pluripremiata, inviata di nascosto al letterato di Sidney Omid Tofighian che l’ha tradotta dalla lingua farsi, Behrouz Boochani ha tolto ogni alibi agli indifferenti. Per quasi vent’anni la comunità internazionale si è mostrata inerte davanti a ciò che stava accadendo al largo delle coste australiane. Dal 2001 un modello migratorio, basato sul respingimento in mare e sulla detenzione in centri offshore, ha fatto deportare, incarcerare, affamare e torturare migliaia di innocenti. Bambini, donne e uomini scappavano da miseria, abusi e guerre. Provenivano da Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Siria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal. I lager della vergogna – che ricordano quelli dove sono rinchiusi i migranti in Libia – sono stati creati su tre isole dell’oceano Pacifico: l’australiana Christmas Island, Manus nella Papua Nuova Guinea e Nauru, una piccola repubblica sulla linea dell’equatore. La maggior parte di essi è stata chiusa grazie alle proteste della società civile australiana. L’anno scorso tutti i bambini sono stati trasferiti con i loro famigliari sulla “terraferma”. Però, non è chiaro che cosa accadrà ai nuovi boat people in arrivo e alle 400 persone rimaste a Nauru e Port Moresby.
In 18 anni non sono stati sufficienti i servizi giornalistici che parlavano dei suicidi fra i detenuti, delle labbra cucite come atto di protesta e dei minori che per la “sindrome da rassegnazione” si spegnevano, smettendo di mangiare e bere. Serviva qualcosa in più. Come un Silvio Pellico degli anni Duemila, Boochani è riuscito a scatenare un domino virtuoso.
Quell’urlo di oltre 400 pagine, che supera i confini di genere e si legge col fiato corto, è una mano tesa a noi lettori. Anche gli abitanti dei Paesi più liberi e ricchi hanno bisogno d’aiuto. Come spiega a LifeGate l’intellettuale curdo, “le politiche disumane contro i migranti sono un esercizio di dittatura. I governi che non rispettano i diritti dei migranti, potrebbero scagliarsi contro tutti noi. Le nostre democrazie sono in pericolo”. Quest’intervista è stata raccolta nell’arco di diverse settimane per mezzo di Whatsapp, lo strumento con cui Boochani ha scritto il suo libro e ha comunicato con il docente di origine iraniana Omid Tofighian. Nelle risposte che seguono, l’autore si sofferma su quanto sta accadendo ai curdi in Siria e spiega perché ha scelto la resistenza pacifica. Sulla gestione del suo personale trauma, dice di non avere una risposta. Però, un obiettivo gli è chiaro: “Nelle mie nuove opere affronterò argomenti diversi. Non posso ridurmi a questa terribile esperienza”. Nessuno dovrebbe. Questa l’intervista completa.
Che cosa pensa della recente offensiva militare turca contro i curdi in Siria?
Ciò che sta accadendo nel nord della Siria non è soltanto un attacco contro i curdi, ma alla democrazia e ai suoi valori. I curdi hanno stabilito il sistema democratico più avanzato nella storia del Medio Oriente; un sistema che si basa sull’uguaglianza. Ora siamo difronte a un esercito fascista che assieme a gruppi terroristici colpisce i curdi che credono nella democrazia. Penso che la più grande minaccia globale sia il terrorismo di Stato e il fatto che i governi si accordino per supportarsi a vicenda nel violare i diritti umani. Oggigiorno li vediamo nascondersi dietro a concetti belli, quali pace, umanità e morale. Ecco perché quello turco (guidato dal presidente Erdogan, ndr.) ha nominato le sue operazioni di genocidio dei curdi ‘Primavera di pace’, una beffa. Ed è esattamente quello che sta facendo anche l’Australia: i suoi politici dicono che stanno salvando vite nell’oceano, ma in realtà stanno facendo torturare persone innocenti in prigioni remote, nascondendo loro stessi dietro una falsa morale.
Era solo un bambino quando la sua famiglia cercò di scappare dalla guerra fra Iran e Iraq (1980-’88). Che cosa ricorda di quel periodo?
Sono nato nel 1983 nella provincia di Ilam, che è una zona curda nell’ovest dell’Iran. La guerra arrivò anche lì, come racconto nel mio libro che però è simbolico. Non ho voluto scrivere un’autobiografia con dettagli veri sui miei famigliari e gli abitanti di Ilam, ma ho rappresentato molte storie tragiche accadute in quella regione. I curdi furono sfollati e persero tutto. Ho cercato di descrivere come la guerra distrugga ogni cosa e sia orribile.
Che cosa significa essere curdo per lei?
Essere curdo e vivere da curdo per me è la cosa più dura di questo mondo perché sei continuamente testimone della sofferenza della tua gente. Superpotenze e governi non democratici stanno cercando di privarci della nostra identità e dei nostri diritti. Come artista, ho il dovere di lottare per l’identità curda non solo perché appartengo a questa popolazione, ma in quanto essere umano che comprende profondamente tale ingiustizia o colonialismo. Per questo motivo potete ritrovare elementi culturali curdi in tutti i miei film e nel mio libro.
I rifugiati nei centri di detenzione hanno sofferto per abusi fisici e psicologici, tra cui la “sindrome da rassegnazione” che porta gli ammalati, tra i quali anche bambini, a spegnersi fino alla morte. Al momento i prigionieri ricevono qualche assistenza medica?
Finora 8 persone sono morte a Manus Island e 5 a Nauru. La maggior parte di loro per negligenza sanitaria e i restanti a causa delle violenze inflitte dalle guardie. Tutti questi decessi provano che questo sistema utilizza la malattia come un mezzo per torturare gli individui. Vorrei, inoltre, ricordare le tante persone danneggiate fisicamente e mentalmente. Abbiamo vissuto nell’assenza di cure e mezzi. Gli ammalati stanno ancora lottando contro questa mancanza. Fortunatamente, otto mesi fa il parlamento australiano ha approvato la “legge Medevac”, che ci sta aiutando molto. In base a essa, chiunque non riceva un trattamento medico in Papua Nuova Guinea e a Nauru deve essere trasferito in Australia. Finora 217 persone sono state portate sulla terraferma e altre dovrebbero partire entro il mese di novembre. Speriamo.
Lei come sta? Come sta elaborando il dolore provato in questi ultimi 6 anni di migrazione, naufragi e prigionia?
Il mio corpo è danneggiato. Io, come tutti gli altri rifugiati, sono stato testimone di cose terribili. Ho visto amici morire, altre persone ferirsi e tentare il suicidio. Molte sono state separate dai famigliari e dai loro bambini. Ho assistito a così tanta umiliazione e a così tanti traumi…Di certo tutte queste immagini sono dentro di me. Questa dura esperienza è diventata una parte di me. E’ difficile portarne il peso e al tempo stesso rimanere forte e positivo. Non sono sicuro di essere capace di elaborare tutto quanto. Ho combattuto per restare vivo e anche per far conoscere questo sistema. Ma non so se ho una vera risposta alla sua domanda.
Adesso in quali condizioni vivono i rifugiati?
Due mesi fa hanno chiuso il centro di detenzione di Manus Island e hanno trasferito ogni prigioniero – me compreso – a Port Moresby, capitale della Papua Nuova Guinea. Due anni fa a Manus c’erano 800 rifugiati, ora in questa pericolosa città circa 250. Non è sicura per chi viene da fuori. Almeno 46 individui sono stati incarcerati e si trovano in condizioni durissime. Sono preoccupato per loro perché il governo australiano non li ritiene dei rifugiati.
La destra e l’estrema destra italiana, il cui leader più popolare è Matteo Salvini, vuole emulare il modello migratorio australiano nel mare Mediterraneo. Vorrebbe dire qualcosa ai nostri politici?
Solo una cosa. Non guardate l’Australia come un modello. Non lasciate che il vostro governo la imiti. E non dico questo solo per i rifugiati, ma per la vostra gente e la vostra democrazia. Camberra ha compiuto tutti questi crimini per anni. Gli australiani glielo hanno permesso e adesso la loro società sta fronteggiando una sorta di dittatura. La democrazia australiana è a pezzi. Dopo aver sperimentato la dittatura a Manus, i governanti trattano gli australiani come i rifugiati. L’Australia al momento ha perso i suoi valori.
Crede ancora nella “resistenza pacifica”? Anche per i curdi?
Sì, sempre, anche per i curdi. Ciò, però, non significa che quando un governo fascista – come quello della Turchia – attacca la tua terra e la tua popolazione, tu non reagisci. Quella curda è sempre stata una resistenza pacifica per creare un sistema democratico in Medio Oriente. La nostra resistenza non violenta a Manus, per esempio, ha fatto vergognare l’Australia e ora ognuno condanna i suoi governi, chi li ha sostenuti, non noi. Abbiamo sfidato l’Australia in così tanti modi che alla fine l’abbiamo educata.
Quali sono le sue speranze e i suoi obiettivi per il futuro?
Dopo aver scritto per tanti anni in prigionia a Manus, sono arrivato a condividere le mie composizioni in un contesto internazionale. Di certo, però, d’ora in poi racconterò storie diverse e anche i miei prossimi lavori artistici tratteranno altri argomenti. Non riduco me stesso soltanto a questa esperienza.
▻https://www.lifegate.it/persone/news/behrouz-boochani-intervista-scrittore-curdo
Behrouz Boochani : Six years as a marooned migrant
▻https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csy9f9
Un nouveau mot (même si on connaît le mot, mais avec l’ajout de l’adjectif « bloqué ») ?
#marooned_migrant —> #migrant_bloqué
#Google erases #Kurdistan from maps in compliance with Turkish gov.
▻http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/e6a0b65e-84fa-447b-9ed4-5df8390961d3
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Google incorporation removed a map outlining the geographical extent of the Greater Kurdistan after the Turkish state asked it to do so, a simple inquiry on the Internet giant’s search engine from Wednesday on can show.
“Unavailable. This map is no longer available due to a violation of our Terms of Service and/or policies,” a note on the page that the map was previously on read. Google did not provide further details on how the Kurdistan map violated its rules.
The map in question, available for years, used to be on Google’s My Maps service, a feature of Google Maps that enables users to create custom maps for personal use or sharing through search.
Because the map was created and shared publicly by a user through their personal account, it remains unknown if their rights have been violated or if they will appeal.
A Turkish lawmaker from the ultra-nationalist, opposition IYI (Good) Party revealed last week that he put a written question to the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Cahit Turan, as to whether the Turkish government acted to make Google remove the Kurdistan map.
Turan answered in affirmative, saying authorities were in touch with Google.
The MP, Yavuz Agiralioglu, charged the map with “being at the service of terrorist organizations” in his question to the minister, referring to Kurdish armed groups fighting for different degrees of autonomy and recognition of cultural rights in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, modern nation-states Kurdistan was divided between a century ago.
He also claimed the map violated the Turkish borders, although it showed modern borders superimposed by a non-standard red line that defined Kurdistan as “a geo-cultural region wherein the Kurdish people have historically formed a prominent majority population.”
“The most dangerous Turk is the one looking at the map. We laid the Earth flat under our feet and only walked. We took our civilization, our justice, and our mercy to the countries we went. Let those who fancy dividing our country with fake maps look at our historical record,” the nationalist MP tweeted, in a veiled reference to the fate of the Armenian people which faced a genocide before the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Currently, the search “Kurdistan” on Google brings up results for the Kurdistan Region and its constitutionally-defined borders within Iraq and the Kurdistan Province in Western Iran.
The use of the word “Kurdistan” is criminalized in Turkey, even at the parliament’s floors where lawmakers can be fined to pay up to several thousand Liras and be dismissed from at least two legislative sessions.
Maps drawn by ancient Greeks, Islamic historians, Ottomans, and Westerners showing Kurdistan with alternative names such as “Corduene” or “Karduchi” have existed since antiquity.
The use of the name “Kurdistan” was banned by the administration of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the immediate aftermath of the crushed Sheikh Said uprising for Kurdish statehood in 1925.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
Nuova strage a #Kobane. Contraria a ogni norma di diritto internazionale
Da Kobane in queste ore arrivano video molto simili a quando la città siriana in mano ai curdi veniva attaccata da Isis. Questa volta però le bombe sono sganciate dalla Turchia, il secondo esercito della Nato. Dopo Afrin, Erdogan viola ancora una volta il diritto internazionale e bombarda i villaggi abitati dai civili. L’obiettivo è colpire l’esercito curdo YPG e YPJ, il primo che ha resistito, combattuto e vinto contro Daesh, sostenuto dalla coalizione internazionale.
Nei video postati dagli abitanti si vede il terreno saltare, si sentono le urla delle persone. Le stesse persone che da tre anni stanno pazientemente ricostruendo tutto ciò che lo Stato islamico aveva distrutto. Con Ivan Compasso Grozny, a giugno, siamo stati a Kobane. A 4 anni dalla devastazione di Isis abbiamo visto la rinascita di una città e della sua gente, dopo il sangue versato. Abbiamo visto muratori ricostruire case e quartieri. Abbiamo visto nuovi ospedali e nuove scuole nate anche grazie ai soldi raccolti dalle fondazione delle donne del Rojava in Germania, Austria, Svizzera, Olanda. Coi finanziamenti della provincia Trento è stato rifatta una scuola per i bimbi rimasti orfani perché Daesh ha ucciso i loro genitori: si chiama l’Arcobaleno di Aylan, il piccolo curdo trovato sulle rive del Bosforo in Turchia, simbolo del dramma dei popoli che sfuggono dalle guerre.
Abbiamo visto le strade tornare a vivere. Fino a mezzanotte donne, uomini, bambini insieme per respirare la libertà ritrovata.
Abbiamo visto il Cimitero dei martiri di Kobane: più di mille combattenti hanno dato la vita per liberare il mondo dal terrorismo di matrice islamista.
Abbiamo visto cosa è diventato concretamente il confederalismo democratico alla base l’organizzazione delle città del Rojava ispirato alle teorie socialiste del filosofo statunitense Murray Bookchin: una democrazia senza Stato, flessibile, multiculturale, anti-monopolistica; laicità, femminismo, ecologismo come pilastri. Abbiamo visto che non sono solo tensioni ideali, ma fatti concreti: la parità di genere e la laicità nel bel mezzo dell’estremismo religioso islamista, l’introduzione del matrimonio civile e l’abolizione della poligamia. Le donne hanno ruoli politici e militari, fanno parte delle forze di sicurezza e gestiscono l’organismo di polizia contro la violenza sessuale.
Abbiamo visto gli sforzi per arrivare a una convivenza pacifica a Mumbij, città multietnica in mano a Isis e liberata ad agosto 2016 dalle truppe del Free Syrian Army (FSA) appoggiate dagli americani. Un anno dopo libere elezioni in cui si è scelto di rappresentare tutte le identità: turcomanni, arabi, circasi, curdi. Quattro etnie, quattro identità, ognuna disegnata sulla bandiera, tutte presenti nell’Assemblea popolare votata dai cittadini. Per la prima volta il modello del confederalismo democratico è a partecipazione araba ed esce dal confine curdo.
Abbiamo visto l’istruzione tornare secolare, cioè laica, le scuole islamiche abolite nei territori riconquistati.
Ora la Turchia sta distruggendo tutto questo. Dopo il vertice di Istanbul tra Germania, Francia, Turchia e Russia, sono iniziati gli attacchi. “La Turchia ha bombardato le aree di confine di Kobane e del Rojava per quattro giorni davanti agli occhi di tutto il mondo – scrive UIKI, l’Ufficio Informazione Kurdistan in Italia – Né la coalizione internazionale contro ISIS né gli Stati che hanno partecipato al vertice di Istanbul hanno preso seriamente posizione contro questi attacchi o hanno condannato lo stato turco”, sottolineando il paradosso di attacchi contemporanei: quelli turchi nel Nord della Siria, quelli di ISIS contro il villaggio di Hejin nell’area di Dêir Er-Zor, uno dei suoi ultimi bastioni. Qui le forze democratiche siriane – con YPG e YPJ come elemento aggregante – continuano a combattere.
Per questo oggi dal Rojava arriva una chiamata d’emergenza all’Europa e all’Occidente. La copresidenza del KCDK-E ha emesso un comunicato in cui si legge: “Il Congresso europeo della Società democratica curda (KCDK-E) fa appello per un’azione urgente ai curdi e ai suoi sostenitori in Europa in seguito agli attacchi dello stato turco contro Kobane. L’esercito turco ha bombardato con armi pesanti i villaggi di Kor Eli e Selim e stanno progettando un massacro. Chiediamo a tutti di organizzare al più presto mobilitazioni a difesa e a sostegno di queste terre che sono costate il sangue di donne, giovani, bambini […]”
Noi come giornalisti abbiamo il dovere di non far passare sotto silenzio questa ennesima strage contraria a ogni norma di diritto internazionale.
Soirée solidaire • Convoi solidaire pour le camp de Lavrio en Grèce | KEDISTAN
▻http://www.kedistan.net/2018/09/18/soiree-solidaire-convoi-lavrio
Kurdes, l’exode d’Afrîn à Lavrio est un petit documentaire de 30 minutes réalisé par Jacques Leleu et Jean-Marc Thérin. A l’occasion d’un convoi solidaire pour le camp de Lavrio en Grèce, ils ont recueilli les témoignages d’exilé.e.s ayant fui les combats après l’invasion d’Afrîn par l’armée turque et ses supplétifs jihadistes.Ce.lle.ux-ci racontent les exactions des envahisseurs, la peur, la fuite.
Idleb, dernier massacre avant inventaire de guerre ?
▻http://www.kedistan.net/2018/09/06/idleb-massacre-inventaire-guerre
Zehra Doğan, Festival des Autres Mondes • Kézako ?
Semaine intergalactique sur la ZAD
du 27 août au 2 septembre 2018
▻https://lavoiedujaguar.net/Semaine-intergalactique-sur-la-ZAD-du-27-aout-au-2-septembre-2018
Après la victoire tant attendue contre le projet aéroport, nous tentons de sortir enfin d’un printemps brutal. Celui-ci a été marqué par deux phases d’expulsions au cours desquelles le gouvernement s’est consacré à se venger de l’affront qu’avait représenté la ZAD pendant tant d’années. Ces opérations policières massives ont causé beaucoup de blessé·e·s et entraîné la destruction d’une partie des lieux de vie de la ZAD ainsi qu’une longue présence militaire. Mais l’État a dû renoncer à aller plus loin et à éradiquer notre présence dans ce bocage. La résistance sur le terrain, les solidarités ailleurs et le processus de négociation ont abouti à un statu quo sur le maintien de dizaines d’habitats, espaces communs ainsi que des activités sur la majeure partie des terres prises en charge par le mouvement. Néanmoins, ce que nous avons réussi à conserver aujourd’hui pourrait très vite être attaqué de nouveau, administrativement, politiquement ou militairement. Alors que la ZAD se remet de ses plaies, se recompose, que les travaux des champs et les constructions reprennent, nous nous projetons sur les combats des prochains mois. (...)
#Notre-Dame-des-Landes #ZAD #intergalactique #rencontres #autonomie #jonctions #Kurdistan #Mexique #sans-papiers
