YPJ-Şengal: We Will Resist With The Spirit Of All Our Berivans

 

The Yekîneyên Parastina Jin a Şengal (YPJ-Şengal), or Women’s Defense Units of Şengal, held its first congress between 12-13 February in the mountains of Şengal (Sinjar) – reports an article from JİNHA carried in Özgür Gündem.

In addition to changing the name of the group from the YPJ-Şengal to the Yekîneyên Jinên Şengal (YJŞ), or Women’s Units of Şengal, many other important decisions were taken regarding organization and self-defense.

YJŞ Commander Deniz Dağ and YJA-Star commander Berfin Nurhak spoke with JİNHA reporter Jînda Asmen about the congress.

Berfin Nurhak told the news agency that many developments were taking place within the Êzidî community through activities around self-defense and education, saying “as Êzîdi women we believed that we needed education and organization, both practically and theoretically, and we carried it out.”

She went on to describe how over time the YPJ-Şengal had engaged in self-education and was able to set up different organizations, adding “in order to achieve even stronger results in keeping with these developments a conference was held and the name of the organization  was changed to the YJŞ. The YJŞ invited us as part of the YJA-Star to the conference as delegates. We took part in the YJŞ’s 1st Conference and as always we shared our 40 years of accumulated experience.”

The YJŞ Is A Vanguard Force For The Êzîdi Community

Deniz Dağ, a YJŞ commander, also shared her views with JİNHA: “For us Êzîdi women this conference gave us some perspective on this process. It was very important. We debated widely, in particular around ours plans and projects, and then around how all of these will be implemented. In the course of all these debates this truth came to reflect itself: The YJŞ is a vanguard force for the Êzîdi community.”

We Will Liberate All The Imprisoned Women

Dağ went on to describe how Êzîdi women had made great advances under the leadership of the YJA-Star, saying “Our main goal is to widen our organizing even further, so that women will not remain defenseless and the pain their experienced will not be experienced again. We take to heart the philosophy and understanding of our literature. As our YJŞ conference made clear in our slogan, we will resist to the end with the spirit of our Berivans and we will liberate all the women who have fallen prisoner.”

Dağ concluded by saying that another important decision taken at the conference was the decision to open the Berivan Şengal Academy

Berivan Şengal was a commander of the YPJ-Star from Şengal who was among the first women to take up arms following the ISIS attacks against Şengal in 2014. She was killed in Turkish bombing raid in the Kandil Mountains of South Kurdistan on November 2015.