Today, on the 22nd of December, we commemorate the internationalist revolutionary and fighter Emîr Qubadî, (nom de guerre: Rojvan Kobanê) a Persian youth that came to Kobanê to fight against ISIS for peace and freedom in the Middle East. He fell Şehîd while rescuing an injured friend in the battle of gaining the Culture and Arts center out of the hands of the enemy.
Emir, who chose the name Rojvan Kobanê, was born in Mashhad city of Iran’s Khorasan province and came to Kobanê in October. He followed the mobilization call of Abdullah Öcalan, which he made from the prison-island Imrali for everyone to join in the resistance of Kobanê.
A comrade who fought with him described him with these words: “Despite having a language problem, he established warm relationships with his warrior nature and shared comradely in a short time. He solved his language problem in a short time and improved his language skills in a short time; like a month. Our comrade Rojvan was a friend of ours who participated in living and fighting under these difficult conditions with great enthusiasm and effort. He was very enthusiastic and rushed to every job and work.”
For us, the remembrance of Şehîd Rojvan is painful and at the same time very meaningful and symbolic. For the internationalist struggle, for the democratic struggle of the people in the Middle East, friends like Heval Rojvan are vanguards, examples, lights of hope, for their own people as well as for every revolutionary. Losing a friend like him also always means losing a vanguard, someone that was able to bring about huge changes in society with his revolutionary stance. This makes it painful for us. But an Iranian friend giving his life for the liberation of a Kurdish city and in the fight against the enemies of humankind also is showing the stance it needs to bring about freedom and equality in the region and beyond.
The life and struggle of Şehîd Rojvan is an answer to the attempts of the imperialist and local powers. Following their strategies in the Middle East, they either try to raise the enemy-ship among the people in the region, dividing them by ethnicity, beliefs or gender, or try to unite them under an banner of a corrupted understanding of religion. The misery that these politics bring we can see everyday in the region, between Palestine and Israel, Azerbaijan and Armenia, West-Sahara, Sudan, Yemen ect.
Against these attempts, Şehîd Rojvan walked on the way of siblinghood among the people, based on just ethics and values. This path was paved by the prophet Manî and all fighters for freedom that came after him and struggled for the friendship and the freedom of the Kurdish and Persian people. Şehîd Rojvan saw the common history of the people as his own history, attempting to write history of unity, not of oppression. His life is a call to all young people of the Middle East and beyond to continue the fight for humanity, freedom and equality, here in Rojava or beyond.
Our special thanks to the group The Federation of Anarchism Era for supporting and translating the video.
Internationalist Commune of Rojava,
22.12.2023