We publish here an inoficial translation of a statement published on Avrupa Haber.
Purple-Red Collective: November 25, International Day against Violence against Women, was created by the honorable struggle of the Mirabal siblings, who were the founders of the June 14 Movement and fought against the fascist Trijillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The dictatorship, which saw revolutionary women in particular as a threat, subjected them to interrogations with torture, arrests and imposed prison sentences on them. Women, reacting angrily to the murder of the Mirabal siblings by the fascist dictatorship, staged large protest demonstrations across the country. These protests quickly spread to other Latin American countries and to many parts of the world. Their memory and struggle became a symbol of the women's liberation movement around the world, and in 1999, November 25 was declared the International Day Against Violence Against Women.
Today, the women who have overthrown the institution of the family, which is the cornerstone of private property and the roles assigned to them, such as "sacred motherhood", who have broken down the walls of their homes and have not allowed themselves to be broken before exploitation and violence, fill the streets and squares. And they loudly shout their slogans and raise their voices for their rights and freedoms, against the violence, exploitation and oppression to which they are subjected, and above all, they fight against the system that produced it. They have many reasons for doing so; because it is women who are gang-raped in wars and considered the spoils of war, who are threatened with circumcision, who are murdered in the streets in the name of "honour", who are beaten to death, whose bodies are commodified and sold in markets, who are forced to migrate, who are sexually harassed and raped, who are subjected to the worst working conditions and exploited more and more economically, and it is they who make up the part of society most threatened by poverty and who have no place in social life.
Those responsible for this world order, in which not only women's freedom but also their right to life is usurped, are neither "masculinity" alone nor "jealous, mentally ill men with the gene for violence". It is the imperialists and capitalists who, in order to be able to exploit the peoples of the world more and to be able to exploit women's labour more, instigate wars. The reason for the above picture is the system. In order to protect their existence and dominance over society, they exert pressure and violence on all sections of society, especially women, and have this enforced by their lackey states. At the slightest rebellion against them, the states, through their soldiers, army and police, try to crush them, and those who fight against them expect trials and prisons. Resistant communist, revolutionary and progressive women who pose a major threat to the system and their states are considered direct targets and killed, or subjected to all kinds of torture, including sexual harassment and rape during interrogations, and sentenced to heavy prison terms. The goal, of course, is to destroy the organized struggle of the oppressed and especially its vanguard forces. A clear example of this is the brutal attacks by the fascist Turkish state in Turkey and Turkey-Kurdistan against revolutionary and communist women.
They are not only afraid of their fights, but also of their corpses, because the fascist Turkish state and its soldiers torture the immortalized guerrilla corpses, display the naked bodies of female guerrillas in the media and thus try to intimidate all women. These efforts are in vain. Comrade Roza and Asmin, who saw the liberation of women in the social struggle and revolution and became immortal in the People's War, whose bodies were tortured and even beheaded, shows us how much the fascist state is afraid of warring women.
The ruling classes use or cause violence to be used for their own interests not only against revolutionary women, but also against all oppressed women. State institutions of all kinds, religion, family, education, print media and media shape gender roles by enforcing the image of women as second class human beings, by adopting anti-women policies and thus legitimizing violence against women. In short, the patriarchal understanding is reinforced in every section of society for the continuation of the exploitative system. The state and its legal system, the military and the police openly protect and reward murderers, perpetrators and rapists. We are witnessing the consequences of misogyny, reinforced and supported by the policies of conservative governments in all spheres of social life, through the murders of women and brutal violence against women committed every day all over the world. We know very well that it is our human duty to change this situation and this can only be realized with an organized struggle. We also know now; that a line of struggle characterized by an understanding that separates the causes of violence against women from the system and the patriarchal understanding it creates, and from the misogynist policies of governments, and that provides only for confrontation with "the man and masculinity" will not lead us women to liberation. An attitude that sees women as poor victims of violence, whose agenda is only to keep a diary of violence against women and statistics about it, will only bring to light a practice that hopes for help from the state, demands legal regulations and internal regulations, and demands improvement. Although we do not reject these forms of struggle, we know very well that in this way no account can be demanded for the murdered revolutionary and communist women, for the women who suffered state violence, for our female comrades who became immortal in the ranks of the People's War and for the women who became victims of femicide.
Women who are oppressed, who want to end their slavery in the labour market and who want to put an end to the oppression and violence to which they are subjected, should no longer see themselves as "poor" victims of violence, but as active subjects of the class struggles against the private property system and be in the front line.
We, as activists of the Purple-Red Collective (MOR-KIZIL KOLEKIF) will meet and organize the "25th of November, the day against violence against women and of international solidarity" in this sense. We will go to the streets and fill the squares on this day to call out loudly against the system that feeds violence against women and exploitation of women and against the patriarchal understanding that is always created and fed by the system, that we will fight against the male dominated understanding in all fields. With this in mind; we call on all oppressed working women to fight side by side with us and fill the streets and squares on November 25th.
STOP THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN LED FROM STATE HAND!
LOW WITH THE IMPERIALIST-CAPITALIST SYSTEM AND ITS PATRIARCHAL UNDERSTANDING THAT GENERATES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF WOMEN FOR LIBERATION AND FREEDOM!
AGAINST THE VIOLENCE OF THE STATE AND THE PATRIARCHY, THE VIOLENCE OF WOMEN IS LEGITIMATE!
Purple-Red Collective
