Transnational Alliance for the struggle for freedom and self-determination held a demonstration on Saturday with the title “Jin Jiyan Azadi”.
The demonstration was held on the Day of International Human Rights on December 10, in Göttingen city of Germany. According to the Transnational Alliance’s press release, at least 250 participants took place in Göttingen city center following the theme “Jin Jiyan Azadi – to support the struggle for freedom and self-determination”. It started at 1 p.m. with an opening rally at the Auditorium and ended at Wilhelmsplatz with a closing rally.
The “Transnational Alliance for the Struggle for Freedom”, which was founded by several left-wing groups and communities in Göttingen, called and invited for the demonstration. The demonstration lasted about 1.5 hours and made a powerful impression, music was played in different languages, and the demonstrators chanted loud slogans like “Jin, Jiyan Azadi – Women, Life, Freedom” and “Support the international solidarity”. At the various stops in the city center, speeches were delivered in different languages by different groups — some of whom were involved in organizing the demonstration.
According to the organizers, the reason for the demonstration was the tense global political situation which becomes particularly visible in the current revolts in various regions of the world, which are often brutally repressed by the authorities. The organizers wrote in their appeal: “Murder, war, hunger, exploitation, and environmental destruction currently prevail in all parts of the world. They are caused by the global capitalist system. States like the USA, Europe, Russia, and China – together with their respective allies – divide the power among themselves. The repression can be felt everywhere: here in Europe, but especially in the global South: in Iran, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Balochistan, Iraq, Palestine, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia – everywhere.”
“With the demo, we condemn the neoliberal and colonial economic policies,” said an organizer. These policies, she said, “with their logic of exploitation, are responsible for the destruction of the lives of millions of people. The destruction that daily kills and forces people to flee.”
Specifically, the activists say that they are concerned with current global political events in various regions and countries of the world. This includes, for example, the bloody war of extermination that the NATO partner Turkey is waging against Rojava and all Kurds, in which it does not even shy away from the massive use of banned chemical weapons against the Kurdish freedom fighters.
In addition, the activists said the demonstrations were held against the fascist regime of Iran, whose security forces are taking extremely brutal action against the resistance movements. For example, the Iranian regime has committed massacres against the Kurdish and Baloch populations in Kurdistan and Zahedan. In the last three months alone, more than 400 people have been killed in the wake of protests in Iran and 15,000 others have been imprisoned, with many of them facing the death penalty, they said.
“In Afghanistan, we see the warring NATO countries presenting their criminal acts to the world population for 20 years as “women’s liberation.” Then, power was handed back to the murderous Taliban. The massacres of the Hazara and other minorities and the oppression of women and girls characterize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the organizers said.
“The Pakistani regime has been committing a systematic genocide in Balochistan for years. More than 30,000 Baloch activists in Pakistan have been abducted by the security forces and never have been seen again. Political killings are being transferred abroad as evidenced by the murder of journalist Sajid Hussain in Sweden in April 2020 and activist Karima Baloch in exile in Toronto in December 2020,” the activists stated.
It is to be mentioned that demonstrations were also held in Göttingen earlier against the mentioned “murders” of the two Baloch activists in Sweden and Canada.
The call for the demonstration continues to draw attention to the Sudanese mass uprising in 2019. “This led to the overthrow of the Islamist-military regime of Omar al-Bashir, but was subsequently nullified by the military coup under General Abdel Fattah Burhan, who is now brutally cracking down on any social protest by women, queers, ethnic minorities, and students — arresting, torturing and killing many people,” the organizers said.
Colonialism in Abya Yala (the indigenous name of the Americas) through land theft, death squads, and police terror against small farmers and indigenous peoples, such as the Mapuche, is also persistently present, demonstrators said. They concluded by saying that the demonstrators showed it loud and clear that there can only be one response to the repression of freedom movements worldwide: Global solidarity in resistance against state repression and tyranny, and for a liberated society.