‘Male violence is killing more Kurdish women than Saddam’s genocide’

KT News:

Women activists have spoken out against the high level of sexual harassment and murder of women in the south of Kurdistan.

32 women’s group have signed a petition stating: “In the last 23 years the KRG has become a hell for women. Thousands of women have been killed or under cultural pressure have committed suicide and become the victims of Kurdistan’s partial society. The number of these victims is now greater than that of the victims who were killed by chemical weapons and the other forms of Kurdish genocide”.

In their statement they use examples from the last twenty days to show the horror of what is happening in our region: “A Nepalese woman who came to work in the city of Suli was found hanged on 23/12/13. On 29/12/13, in a woman’s shelter in Suli, a woman committed suicide. On 31/12/13 a young girl was killed by her brother in the town of Kefir. On 31/12/13 in Erbil city a woman was killed by an AK47 in the hands of her husband and another woman was found hanged in their house. On 5/1/14 a woman aged 20 was found dead with five bullets in her head, 35 kilometers outside Erbil. On 6/1/14 a woman from western Kurdistan, a refugee aged 16 years, was subjected to kidnapping and rape by six men. In the same week in the city of Suli, a young man killed his partner and then he killed himself as well”.

The statement asks the people of Kurdistan to support and respect women’s rights and it raises four demands: for more legislation to protect women; for enhanced education standards; for compensation for the victims of these crimes; and for measures to enable more women to find employment and so secure a bigger role in society.