Healthcare workers in Iran and East Kurdistan started protests in many places against harsh working conditions and violations of their rights.

The Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) Health Committee made a written statement and saluted the boycott and protest actions of healthcare workers.

The statement released on Wednesday includes the following:

‘In the 21st century, women, the values and sanctities of society are being raped in every aspect of life.  Women have created life with great labour from the beginning of human history until today. The capitalist modernity system targets society in the person of women and tries to design society according to its own politics.

In all societies, the measures of morality and conscience are determined in the person of women. It is the woman who creates and builds life and determines its moral and political measures. For this reason, there is a need for women to organise in every field against the male-dominated mentality. In the context of the harmony and unity of women's organisations, all areas of life need to be strengthened. It is essential to develop self-defence and self-defence against this masculine system.

Attacks against women are aimed at the unity and solidarity of women's organisations. This is because the system is afraid of strong-willed, organised women. We saw the most concrete example of this in the ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ [Woman, Life, Freedom] protests that followed the murder of a Kurdish woman named Jina Mahsa Amini, a victim of the patriarchal mentality, on 16 September 2022 in Iran. All segments of society stood up with the philosophy of ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ and started to build a new existence.

A few days ago, a female doctor was raped and murdered in India as a result of the rapist mentality. In the person of Jina Amini in Iran and the doctor raped in India, the male-dominated mentality showed its dirty face once again. Thousands of women face this mentality every day. However, society does not surrender in the person of free and resistant women and holds this rapist mentality to account. Today, women's organisation and resistance are spreading all over the world with the philosophy of ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’.

The values of women and society are secured by protecting the essence of women and the values they create. Leader Apo's [Abdullah Öcalan] remark that ‘The 21st century will be the century of women’ is a concrete indicator of this. The murdered Indian woman was a doctor and was working for society. She was brutally murdered while struggling to respond to the suffering of the society.

Being a doctor is a universal identity. The system of capitalist modernity wants to spread the rape culture like a cancer to all segments of society. It imposes this on women's bodies and tries to control women in this way. This immoral attack and mentality must be opposed and rejected by healthcare workers. The awareness of society on physical and mental health must be raised through the struggle of healthcare workers.

As PJAK Health Committee, we call on all women to come together with the philosophy of ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’, to claim their identity as free women and to organise themselves. For this reason, all health institutions and organisations must take a stand against the genocide against women and society and stand with the suffering and values of their people.

We also express our support for the actions of healthcare workers in East Kurdistan and Iran and call on them to raise their demands and support the resistance of their comrades in the dungeons of the Iranian regime. The whole society must fulfil its basic duties against femicides, executions and arrests.”