A group of people arriving at Van from Germany held a commemoration for their friend Andrea Wolf, an internalionalist PKK member who lost her life in a clash together with 40 comrades of hers.

The friends of Wolf visited the monumental tomb in Çatak district of Van which was named after Ronahi, the code name of PKK guerrilla of German origins, national human rights activist and sociologist Andrea Wolf, who was among the PKK militants buried in the mass grave discovered by IHD (Human Rights Association) personnel in the spring of 2011.

The group visited the graves of the massacred PKK members and the monument built in honour of Wolf.

Speaking there, one of Wolf’s friends, Thomas Springer, said they came together with Wolf around a goal 20 years ago and that her murder shocked them. He told that they have organised activities and movie shows to tell and to introduce the struggle of Wolf for many years and added that the recent developments in Rojava also had a big impact on them. Springer said they wanted to be in solidarity with the Kurdish people and came to Van to see closely what the Kurdish people are undergoing.

Speaking after, another friend of Wolf, Maria Muck said some of the graves she saw in the cemetery lack names on it, adding that the executions and summary killings are part of the reality of Kurdistan. She said a commission to search these kinds of executions, just like that of Andrea’s must be set and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

Andrew Wolf alongside 40 PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) militants were murdered and buried in the village of Andiçen (Kelahêrê) in Van's Çatak district by the Turkish army in a massacre on 23rd October 1998.

According to information gathered to date, in 1998 the German internationalist Andrea Wolf in the Kurdish women’s army (YAJK), together with her Kurdish comrades, were taken prisoner by the Turkish army following a skirmish in this area. According to witnesses’ statements, as an unarmed prisoner, she was tortured and extralegally executed along with at least two other combatants – the victims’ corpses were subsequently further abused and mutilated.

Dozens of combatants were apparently murdered in the skirmish and the following massacre.
The execution by shooting of the defenceless prisoners confirms the elements of the offence as murder according to international law. The killing of already disarmed prisoners – as well as those unable to fight – is a blatant contravention against all criteria of international law and, according to the Geneva Convention, a war crime – and this is equally true for the torture of prisoners. This applies equally to the systematically applied methods of sexual torture used by the Turkish army, which officers in particular learn in the training camps of western secret services as a means of subjugation, humiliation, power-demonstration, destruction and debasement of women, but also of men, which does not yield to the containment of state-legitimised oppression. War crimes also include the utilization of poison gas by the Turkish military against combatants of the Kurdish guerrilla and against the civilian population, which took place, and still occur today, according to independent research.

Şerif Fırat, an eye-witness of Wolf’s execution and the guerrillas commander at the time, said in an interview to ANF in May 2012 that he was ready to tell all details of Andrea Wolf's execution in the event of Turkey’s trial at the international court of justice for the crimes against humanity it has committed. “It was her internationalist view that made comrade Ronahi join the ranks of PKK. Her determination to be a true PKK guerrilla as a whole made her comrades respect her”, said Fırat about the German national human rights activist and sociologist Wolf.

Fırat, remarking that he is one of the four eye-witnesses of Ronahi’s extrajudicial execution, pointed out that Ronahi lost her life in the process of severe clashes and very intense military activity in the region in 1998. Fırat said that “Almost all our comrades in this area, where the operations of the Turkish army were centered upon, were involved in severe and long-lasting clashes. Ronahi was taken prisoner by soldiers near Keleş village of Van following a clash which lasted from early morning till night hours. Many guerrillas lost their life in this clash which broke out in an area very close to us. By listening to the radios of soldiers, we were following the discussions on whether to kill Ronahi or take her away alive. After ten minutes of discussions, one commander ordered soldiers ‘not to do the same as before’, referring to another German guerrilla Eva Yunke who had been taken prisoner at an earlier date. They soon after executed Ronahi because they ‘didn’t want to get in trouble once again’. However, Ronahi’s execution was reflected to the media as if she had been captured dead in a clash. This is an absolute lie as she was not shot during the clash. She was taken captured and executed extrajudicially.