Last year a young women from Rojava was martyred in the free mountains of Kurdistan during the heavy attacks of the Turkish state against the Guerilla. Inspired by her story one of us drew a picture of her. Today we want to tell her story.
Şehid Laleş Avesta was born to Ezidi parents in Tirbespiyê (Rojava/North Syria). Her family was familiar with and involved in the Kurdish liberation movement. In the course of the Rojava revolution she took part in youth works and worked to spread the revolution in the Kurdish society and among other population groups. She was particularly fascinated by Abdullah Öcalan’s philosophy of life and his ideology of women’s liberation.
When the Islamist attacks on the people of Rojava increased, several of her childhood friends were killed. Especially as a young ezidi woman she wanted to take revenge for all the women that were taken, sold, raped and killed by Islamist forces such as the so called ISIS. This prompted her to join the guerrillas in 2017, because she understood that the issue of war and oppression is not limited to the region of Rojava and that solutions for Kurdistan and the Middle East have to be found on a broader level. During her basic training, she underwent immense personal development, which she herself felt was a form of rebirth. She began to break away from the traits imparted by the patriarchal system and vehemently rejected the status of enslavement assigned to women.
In the mountains of Kurdistan she could breath in the air of the wind that was leading her on the path to get to know herself. For as the mountains had always been providing shelter and protection for the ezidi society when they faced another genocide. She, as a young ezidi women, built a strong connection to them, as it is place where the freedom of society and the revolution of democratic confederalism become one. Convinced that the life in the mountains make people free, she has taken strong steps to become a free woman.
As massive attacks on the Kurdish people and the freedom movement were taking place at the time of her arrival in the mountains, her first area of practice was in the Zap region. She fought there for three years and took up the responsibility of being a team commander. In 2020, she came to Avaşîn, where she participated in the resistance against the Turkish invasion from 2021. After that, she fought again in the mountains of the Zap region. During the Turkish occupation attack last year, Şehid Laleş Avesta offered uncompromising resistance in the tunnel facility in Kokelê. Unable to break this resistance, the Turkish invading forces used forbidden chemical weapons and unconventional bombs. Laleş Avesta and her fellow fighters refused
to surrender and were martyred as a result of Turkey’s war crimes.
What is left is the heritage of her struggle, our memories of her and her dreams that are waiting to be fulfilled. As young internationalist women we see it as our responsibility of comradeship to pick up the flag of this young ezidi women from Rojava who gave her life for women’s liberation. Heval Laleş, we will follow your path by continuing your struggle for the freedom of women!
Internationalist Commune of Rojava,
06.07.2023