GENT – Today, Saturday January 14, 2023, the “Peace House” in Ghent, Belgium was occupied and returned to the city’s residents. The city of Ghent planned to sell the building and thus take it away from community use. The people do not tolerate that and have summarily occupied the house with a view to self-government and democratic organization in Rojava. As part of the international solidarity initiatives between societies, the Rojava Solidarity Collective Ghent has issued a declaration of friendship and solidarity with Kurdish society and the Rojava revolution.
The statement said:
“Dear Comrades
As we speak, the revolution in Rojava continues to be threatened by Turkish fascism and the silence (or rather the silence (or rather the connivance) of its western military sponsors, aka NATO. Like everyone here today this challenge to the revolution, along with other threats in Kurdistan, Iran and the Middle East/West Asia, motivates us in Ghent to organize.
A small but motivated group has decided to occupy a building and as part of the solidarity work around the democratic struggle in Kurdistan and West Asia/Middle East.”
The small group in question has been active on this issue for about a year and a half and has stated that they have occupied the building for internationalist people willing to work in the common struggle. In addition, the group explained that they are allied with the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî collective in Ghent. The group further explained:
“Our goal in the coming period with this occupation is to create a base in Ghent to bring to light a movement around democratic confederalism, the Rojava revolution, the struggle in Kurdistan and the Kurdish question in Ghent. It is to be discussed here in Ghent, after many years of silence on this issue. The Kurdish question is actually not a question at all, it is an answer. An answer to the state of our democracy, the state of the revolutionary socialist struggle and an answer from the free autonomous spirit of a self-organized society.
Our base, a building that suffers from the city government’s neoliberal approach to community land and property, namely to privatize it, invest a little money and permanently lose democratic control over the function of said property. The fact that property that has a function of international solidarity and peace is being sold at a time of war is sheer cynicism and illustrates the state’s insistence on a capitalist world. At a time when we are moving towards a war economy, advocating low government deficits and deleveraging is tantamount to surrender. The very developments that figures like Putin and Erdogan need to build international solidarity with the many struggles that are taking place to break. They further individualize struggles and narrow the geopolitical spectrum into “us” and “them”.
We as the Rojava Collective Ghent join this historic struggle against the privatization of democratic property, our commons and our land. In solidarity with Rojava, where the revolution for more than 10 years has been proving that communal land and shared democratic control over it can sustain a stateless society without centralized power, emancipating its society and embracing all men and women in north-eastern Syria free life possible.
Everyone who wants to organize further and build a solidarity presence with the struggle in Kurdistan is invited to help in any way they can.”
