Statement of YPG International during the ceremony that took place in the city of Derik the 2th of February in honour of Siyar Gabar (Jakob Riemer). Siyar was a member of the HPG guerilla who fell the past 9th of July in Northern Kurdistan during a military operation of the Turkish fascist army.
“Hevalen hejar,
We are YPG International.
We came together here to remember Sehid Siyar Gabar.
We all know why he became Sehid.
We all know how he lived, what he struggled for, why he gave his life in the mountains of Kurdistan with the weapon in his hands.
We understand.
We also know what they are saying right now about him in Europe.
In the newspapers, in the television, in the speeches of all these experts and analysts.
We know what they are thinking.
They are thinking: Why?
Why should a German teenager take this path?
Why an European citizen, with the possibility to live a peaceful and relatively comfortable life should go to war, should join the Guerilla?
Why should he put his body in front of the Turkish soldiers, under the bombs of the airplanes and deadly drones?
We know what they are saying.
We know well how everyday, every minute, every single second they are working to destroy the hope and revolutionary dreams of our youth and our people. To make everyone think that the only possible way, the only possible life, is the one that Capitalist Modernity offers to us.
But we can understand.
We didn‘t know personally Sehid Siyar, but we know why we are here.
We are here because we could not live peacefully while the biggest Revolution of our century is at war.
We are here because we could not look the other way while the fascists prepare their next massacre.
We are here because we could not sleep quietly while they are bombing villages, killing children, raping women and filling their prisons with thousands of revolutionaries and dissidents.
We are here because we could not accept that history has finished, that there is no alternative, no other life than the one of the capitalist modern slave, of the dominated women and the oppressing men, the life of the passive, blind, mute and deaf citizen.
We are here because we cannot coexist in peace with the same State that makes the tanks that killed the free people of Afrin and that wants to erase a Revolution, an idea that can bring peace, freedom and justice not only for the Middle East, but for the whole world.
We cannot! We want not.
Heval Siyar also could not. And he did not.
We will in his spirit follow his path and continue the struggle that he gave his life for.
Siyar dein Kampf geht weiter!*
Biji Serok Apo!
Sehid namirin!
Sehid namirin!
Sehid namirin!”
(*) In German: Siyar, your Struggle continues. In reference to the sentence shouted by Rudi Dutschke during the funeral of the RAF member Holger Meins, who died inside prison after a hunger strike.
