The Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) has issued a condolence message for CPI (Communist Party of India) Red Star leader Sharmistha Choudhury, who passed away on Sunday due to post-Covid complications.

Choudhury, a central committee member of the CPI (ML) Red Star, had recovered after contracting the disease a month ago. However, she fell ill again and was rushed to state-run SSKM Hospital on Saturday, a senior party leader said. She died on Sunday due to post-COVID complications and intestinal ulcer, he said.

The condolence message published by REPAK, based in the Sulaymaniyah city of southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq), includes the following:

“We learned with great sadness of the death of our sister and comrade Sharmistha Choudhury. We express our most sincere condolences to her family, her friends and her comrades.  

As Kurdish Women’s Movement we met Sharmistha in the process of the 2nd World Women’s Conference of Grassroots Women, which has taken place in March 2016 in Kathmandu. We worked together in the preparation process of the International Theoretical Seminar on the Liberation of Women, which the World Women’s Conference has organised in December 2018 in Bangalore. During and after the seminar we had deep and meaningful discussions about the liberation movements in Kurdistan and in India and especially the situation and struggle of women.  

We have come to know Sharmistha as a female pioneer, a political and community leader. As politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Star and a leader of its women’s wing All India Revolutionary Women’s Organisation (AIRWO), Sharmistha was playing a significant role in both, the theoretical-ideological-political and practical struggle for a truly free society in India. She was not aloof but modest and committed to the direct struggle on the ground. Therefore she was arrested when organising the people in Bhangar against forceful land grab.  

We lost a female freedom fighter, a leader, a comrade, a sister. We will miss her profound analyses, her bright ideas, her way of solving problems and her deep sense of community. In memory of Sharmistha we will strengthen the ties between freedom-seeking women in Kurdistan and India and build permanent bridges of common struggle in defence of dignity, life, earth, freedom and justice.”