Make Rojava Green Again and Fridays For Future Rojava released a statement marking the Global Climate Action Day.

The statement reads as follows:

“Dear friends, dear striking youth,

We send our greetings from Rojava, in North-East Syria, where on 9th October the long- announced war of aggression of the fascist Turkish state began. Despite the alleged cease-fire, the attacks continue. The Turkish army and its allied jihadist groups are deliberately attacking civilians and their livelihoods. Again and again they bomb hospitals, village communities, power stations or dams.

The Turkish army bombed the drinking water supply plant in Alouk already in the first days of the attacks, and 450,000 people depend on it. Since then, there has been no clean water in the Heseke district, although more water is needed there because the people who have fled war zones on the border have just arrived there.

During the Afrin attacks at the beginning of 2018, the Turkish army also bombed water systems, and thus, water is being used as a weapon. Erdogan knows that without water no survival is possible and tries to break the resistance of the population and to force them to leave Rojava. The war against ecology, however, began long before 9th October. After all, war has many sides, not only the military side. The fascist Turkish state has been waging an ecological war against the self-governing territories in North-Eastern Syria for several years. By means of
huge dams, the Turkish government can control the water flow of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris to North-East Syria and systematically restrict the water supply. This results in crop failures and declining water quality.

Since 9th October the war against Rojava has reached a new level. Air and artillery attacks not only tear families apart, kill and injure not only humans but also animals and destroy their livelihood, namely nature, in many places.
The attack on Rojava is above all an attack on the achievements of the revolution. A revolution based on radical grassroots democracy, women’s liberation and ecology, and ethnic and religious diversity. A revolution that means hope for people all over the world, ecause it practically shows that an alternative to the existing is possible if we take it into our own hands.

Before we came here, many of us were on the street with you every Friday for the past year. However, we expect nothing anymore from states and governments. Instead of appealing further to politicians who talk instead of taking action, we want to take our future into our own hands.

We came to Rojava as internationalists to take part in the ecological awakening and to learn what a society can look like that manages itself in communities and is based on the values of solidarity and community. After all, we are convinced that we can only solve the ecological crisis if we overcome the mentality of oppression and exploitation against human beings and nature.Today, the Rojava revolution and its nature are in great danger. Due to the war, we had to stop our ecological work on site. However, we are determined to continue. After all, Rojava must be defended, otherwise there is no free earth on which a revolution can take place.

The fact that young people around the world are raising their voices for the climate justice movement in defence of the Rojava revolution gives us strength and courage. Keep it up!

Continue to actively resist and be loud, angry and disobedient!

Together we will change the capitalist system and defend Rojava!

Berxwedan jiyan e – Resistance is life!”