Garmyan drama spotlights the oppression of women in Kurdistan

News and Comment by The Kurdistan Tribune:

Woman who threatened to kill herself. (Photo - 'KurdIu.org')

A young woman in Garmyan, in the Sulaymani region of south Kurdistan, set fire to her accommodation and threatened to burn herself to death yesterday (10th March). She’d had enough of living in abject poverty – made much worse when she was recently abandoned by a second husband – and wanted to end it all. Fortunately a young woman journalist, Nizam Shahib, was passing at the time. Nazim persuaded the woman not to kill herself and contacted the local media, including ‘Hawlati’, which has publicised her plight.

This is another sad story from Garmyan, an area where almost every family lost relatives during Saddam’s murderous Anfal campaign in the 1980s.

It also highlights the oppression of women today in Kurdistan:

1. There is no public support for women who are divorced by their husbands or who leave home to escape domestic violence etc.

2. This is not an isolated incident – it is symptomatic of the abuses of Kurdistan’s patriarchal society.

This young woman and thousands more like her deserve attention from the minister for social affairs, Asos Najib , who should immediately make the case for change to the Kurdistan parliament and tell the public what is happening.