In the second part of this interview, Çîmen Şine, a member of the Coordination of the Free Women’s Community of Eastern Kurdistan (KJAR), spoke about the women's alliance work in Eastern Kurdistan and the relations with women in Iran. 

The first part of the interview can be read here. 

How did the resistance of women from Eastern Kurdistan inspire the wider women’s movement across Iran?

In the twenty-first century, the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî revolution has sparked a powerful awakening among women in the Middle East and around the world. It has shaken every corner of society. Women in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan were profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Jin, Jiyan, Azadî, and they demonstrated this influence through their courage, determination and fearless stance in every sphere of life.

By 2025, the Iranian colonial regime accelerated executions in an attempt to crush and control the growing power of the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî women’s revolution. Yet society, and especially women, refused to remain silent. This defiance marked a new beginning, bringing women together and strengthening the bonds within the women’s movement.

At a time when the world is experiencing the realities of a third world war, violence against women has been carried out both systemically and through nation-state policies. As new power balances emerge, these forms of violence continue to reflect the mindset that underpins them.

From Öcalan’s perspective, we must remember that only a revolutionary breakthrough can counter the pressure and violence imposed on society through the oppression of women, and that women’s autonomous organisation is essential. Today, the women’s perspectives outlined in his Democratic Society Manifesto serve as a key framework for women in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan.

Öcalan’s ideas have become a powerful source of inspiration for women across the world and of course, they have also provided immense strength and a sense of freedom to the women’s movement in Iran.

Is there a common ground between the struggles of Kurdish, Baloch, Azeri and Arab women in Iran?

For years, many joint initiatives have been carried out under shared platforms. Particularly within frameworks focused on democratisation in Iran and efforts to combat feminicide, we have met and worked together on common platforms. After the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî uprising, women’s alliance work in Eastern Kurdistan, expanded further. In 2024–2025, two major conferences were organised in this context, bringing women together across regions. These gatherings have now gone beyond mere solidarity and have begun to lay the foundation for lasting and autonomous platforms.

These collaborative efforts continue. Iranian and Rojhilat women, together with academics, Fars and Baloch women, are participating in multinational democratic women’s platforms based on shared solidarity. Today, national unity efforts are more important than ever.

As women, we share many common concerns and many reasons to unite. Democratisation is a core priority for women in Eastern Kurdistan as well as for women across Iran. Joint conferences and organisational efforts have created the basis for long-term initiatives. One of the outcomes of the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî conference was precisely the emergence of these shared organisational initiatives, which continue through a variety of joint activities.

In this framework, our “No to Executions, Yes to Free Life” campaign is still ongoing. This campaign, along with the struggle for national women’s unity, must remain a central agenda for all women. For us in KJAR, it is a strategic programme and a core perspective.

We call on democratic circles in Eastern Kurdistan, on socialist and leftist women, on women involved in democratic Islamic initiatives, on ecological groups, on all women and feminist movements. Coming together in a broader and more inclusive way is essential. Together, we can democratise Iran. As KJAR, we are now in a phase of building strategic alliances and advancing lasting work based on women’s confederalism.

As women of Eastern Kurdistan, we see it as a strategic necessity to strengthen this work under the guidance of Jin, Jiyan, Azadî. The suffering of Baloch, Azeri, Arab, Kurdish and Fars women is the same. We are all confronted by the same wave of state violence. We can end this oppression. As the women of Iran and Rojhilat, we must unite to build a new, democratic Iran with our own hands. A free life will come through women. An Iran where women live freely, an Iran where no woman faces rape, is possible, as long as patriarchal, male-based laws no longer exist.

According to available figures, at least 1,106 people whose identities have been confirmed have been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025, including 30 women. What do you believe is behind this increase? And what were the reasons given for the execution of these 30 women?

It must be said clearly: the Iranian clerical regime, with its genocidal and gendered policies, uses violence as a tool to control women, peoples and society. Through nationalist and sharia-based laws, it seeks to achieve results by keeping society in a permanent state of fear and coercion.

Executions are carried out to intimidate women, to discipline them and to break their will. This brutal and inhumane practice has been applied relentlessly, especially after the uprisings. Today, almost no country in the world continues executions. It is a crime against humanity, an act of barbarism, fascism and genocide. There can be no justification for it.

I salute the resistance led inside Iran’s prisons by women such as Zeynab Jalalian, Warisha Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi. We are living through a period in which confronting the Iranian regime’s torture and execution policies with full force and elevating the struggle against them, is essential. There are women, young people and entire communities who believe in the philosophy of freedom and are ready to risk everything for a free life.

Fascism, sexism, nationalism and religious fundamentalism target women’s spirit of freedom more than anything else. For this reason, women’s movements must see themselves responsible for confronting these developments, organising themselves and giving society a dynamic of struggle. This is our role of leadership. The struggle against executions is intensely discussed within women’s movements.

Women in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan, both domestically and internationally, have captured the spirit of the moment. That is why the Iranian regime responds with such harshness and escalates executions. Thousands of women have been arrested, poisoned, imprisoned, subjected to intensified domestic violence and to the normalisation of sexual assault. Anti-woman laws are used to govern society.

The execution of 841 people by August 2025 is horrifying on its own, and it is well known that the number is even higher by November. Not only are women under threat of execution, all communities and nationalities living in Iran face the same danger.

Women’s response to this is clear: “This is the time of freedom.” The uprising led by women across more than ninety locations in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan has initiated an irreversible historical period. The spark of revolution has been lit.

This entire process was led by Iranian and Rojhilat women. The first days and months of this revolutionary phase were extremely critical. Now the foundation of a long-term resistance has taken root. A revolutionary wave is rising from the depths. The revolt of women, oppressed as a class, gender and nation, has shaken the system. Because in Iran, women are a revolutionary force. Women played a decisive role in these uprisings. The democratisation of Iran will come through women’s leadership.

Women in Iran are extraordinarily strong; resilient, with profound desires for freedom. In Hewraman, for example, the characteristics of Neolithic and natural society are still alive among women. Women from Kermanshah (Kirmanşan) have deep cultural strength. The Iranian state targets this cultural fabric and this power. Fars, Baloch and Kurdish women are all powerful; their cultural depth gives them enormous influence and leadership in shaping society.

The fundamental distinction in the revolutionary process unfolding in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan is that, for the first time in history, a mass uprising has begun with a demand for women’s freedom. In the movement launched under the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî,” every symbol of the revolution became identified with women. The revolution spoke in a women’s voice, in the colours of the democratic nation and with the spirit of freedom. Its aesthetics were shaped through women; its symbols gained meaning and value in favour of women’s liberation.

Burning the headscarf became a spell of liberation; the image of the confined, domestic woman collapsed. Along with it, the classic model of masculinity also collapsed. This rupture was generated by women. In Iran, where women were turned into objects, this uprising made them the driving force of transformation. Women who had been treated as silent slaves, forced into prostitution networks, imprisoned, tortured or executed, like the martyred Şirin Alamholi, became the icons of dignity.

Today, thousands of their successors are carrying out a broad, revolutionary reckoning with the male-dominated system. University women in particular define democratic change as a revolution. This is why women are among the most frequently executed in Iran: if women can be suppressed, society’s power for freedom can also be crushed. Woman is the dynamic of change, revolution and freedom and the clerical regime knows this.

Women in Iran are executed because they declare that the time for democratic change and freedom has arrived. Warisha Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi are leading significant struggles in this direction. We believe that their struggle will succeed, and that freedom will prevail. Women, united, now represent a new ethic of freedom in Iran.

No democratic or liberation movement can succeed without the participation and colour of women. Yet the Iranian regime continues to do the opposite: repression, torture, impoverishment of women, honour killings and feminicides accelerate without pause. It believes it can succeed through these policies, that by frightening women with execution it can break their will and force their submission. We are facing a regime built on a deeply patriarchal mentality.

The mindset of the Iranian regime is hegemonic masculinity. But regardless of how many executions it carries out, the truth of Iranian and Rojhilat women is powerful, dignified and profound. Iranian society is thirsty for freedom, and one truth remains: the regime cannot suppress this force for freedom and revolution. Society has tasted the potential of the freedom paradigm during the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî uprising. It is important to underline this.

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we must recognise the transformative power of the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî revolution as a central perspective for building a democratic Iran and we must unite our strength as women. Holding this anti-woman regime accountable requires our organised power. Jin, Jiyan, Azadî is that potential.

To all women in Iran, we say: let us organise our uprising through the roadmap of freedom illuminated by this philosophy. Why are women and young people the most executed groups in society? Because women and young people are the principal subjects of freedom.

Today, Abdullah Öcalan provides women with the path of liberation once again. Through his Democratic Society Manifesto, he offers the strongest response to the freedom demands of Iranian women. The only paradigm capable of ending executions is the paradigm of women’s freedom. Societies that walk towards freedom have always succeeded.