other languages: CTA – PT – GER – ESP
We have been writing this brochure in the autumn, which is a time of change and the favorite season of Şehîd Bager Nûjiyan. An old time is passing to make way for a new one. Şehîd Bager fell martyr on December 14, 2018, due to a drone attack by the Turkish state in the Medya Defense Areas. When we commemorate our martyrs in the Kurdish freedom movement—those who gave their lives for the struggle for freedom—we promise to avenge them. We are one with them, inseparable from each other. When a friend falls, it is like a leaf falling from a tree. It falls and becomes new earth, a new foundation for the tree, for a new growth, and with even stronger branches. This tree grows relentlessly. We have no doubt that everything in us is striving for life.
Who was Şehîd Bager? We did not know him personally, just as a large part of the youth movement did not. When he left Europe, we were children or had just started to gain political conscience in school. By the time we got to know the Kurdish movement, he had already fallen several years before. Nevertheless, we got to know the movement through him. Maybe we first saw his face at events, in books, brochures, or as a photo in the homes of friends. Maybe we first heard a story about him, a memory of a moment a friend spent with him, or we heard of his analyses that later shaped our worldview. Many of us found the brochure with his writings somewhere, the same ones you are holding now. The texts we are republishing here are his thoughts from the mountains, his letters to friends and companioned movements, memories from his friends.
To the first edition of the brochure, we added an interview with an old friend of his and an email he wrote from Rojava to Europe, giving those who were fighting there a perspective. His thoughts continue to travel around the world.