On the anniversary of the 9 October 1998 conspiracy against Abdullah Öcalan and the Baghdad agreement against Shengal on 9 October 2020, a workshop titled ‘Freedom Struggle and Peoples’ Alliance Against the State and Power Crisis' was held in Shengal (Sinjar) on Wednesday.

One of the issues discussed at the workshop was the 9 October Agreement signed against the Shengal Autonomous Administration. Hemo Şengali, a member of the Êzdîxan (Yazidi Land) Youth Union, said that the democratic nation, democratic confederalism and moral and political society project presented by Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan is the solution to all problems.

Recalling Abdullah Öcalan's warnings about Shengal, Hemo Şengali said, “Leader Öcalan called for the protection of Shengal. Throughout history, no one has resisted for peoples like he did. Leader Öcalan gave us everything to understand freedom. He is the hope of the youth, women and the oppressed.”

The Yazidi Women's Freedom Movement (TAJÊ)ı Coordination Spokesperson Riham Hico said, “It should not be forgotten that the 9 October Conspiracy was also directed against Yazidis and all peoples. In the democratic nation system proposed by Leader Öcalan, people from many nations, cultures, languages, beliefs and religions can live together. However, although the states in Iraq and the Middle East claim to be democratic, in reality they are just nation states. In Iraq, society is dominated by the Sunnis or the Shiites, depending on which of them governs the country. This causes the problems to deepen.”

Stating that Abdullah Öcalan was arrested because of his ideas, Riham Hico continued: “We see that many developments have taken place in the Middle East with the arrest of the leader. It was the international powers who handed him over to Turkey, which did not have the power to do so. The arrest of Leader Öcalan caused the wars in the region to deepen. No news has been received for years from Leader Öcalan, who has been imprisoned for 25 years. This is causing the crises in the Middle East to deepen. Therefore, the conspiracy against the Leader is also a conspiracy against humanity.”

TAJÊ Member Feride Şengali emphasised that the male-dominated and nationalist system wanted to leave women breathless in every field and said, “Women were seen as a broken branch all over the world, especially in the Middle East. The events of 2014 show how Yazidi women were affected by this. Leader Apo's 50-year struggle has enabled women to rise up once again against the male-state understanding. Leader Öcalan enabled enslaved women to create a revolution and resist against a power that plagues the whole world. The biggest example of this was seen in Rojava. Later, the same thing happened in Shengal and now we see how Yazidi women educated themselves with the ideas and philosophy of Leader Öcalan. Yazidi women are able to resist today.”

In his evaluation about ‘Democratic Nation and the Reality of Shengal’, Azad Hussein, Member of the Assembly of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of Shengal, emphasised that the nation-state forces see Abdullah Öcalan's ideas as a danger against them and stated the following: “These forces target peoples in order to prevent these ideas, which they see as a threat to themselves. The Yazidi people are also targeted because they educate themselves with these ideas and resist genocidal attacks. The forces that want to enslave us are constantly plotting against us under different names. We, on the other hand, want all the components in Shengal to live together.”