Women across Switzerland have gone on strike today. The women's strike, said the organizers, has been organised “not just to show that without the visible and invisible work of women everything stops; we also fight for effective equality now and everywhere! The more multifaceted the strike is, the better it will be!”

Kurdish women were also present at the strike in various Swiss cities with a variety of initiatives.

A speech made at the strike in the name of the Women Defend Rojava campaign said the following:

“Revolutionary greetings from North and East Syria, Rojava,

As Women Defend Rojava, a campaign of the women's movement Kongra Star in Rojava, we send you our support, strength and revolutionary greetings on this day of struggle for women's freedom!

Today the friends and comrades from Switzerland are on strike to continue walking on the path of freedom. We know that this is a way of struggle. A struggle of women who are working with all their strength to build free and democratic societies. The history of women is a history of resistance that started on this day their oppression began. Today we continue the path of these resistant women.

This resistance means struggle. A struggle of women, which is not only a history, but also a struggle that goes through the whole world. The resistance of women expresses itself every day on all five continents. Women in Latin America take to the streets against feminicides and for the right to control their own bodies, and protect their indigenous communities from genocide and assimilation. Women in Africa organize against colonialism and the plundering of their land. In Europe, women are organising against patriarchal states and capitalist exploitation, and in Asia, women are organising self- defence against patriarchal violence. The current BlackLivesMatter protests, which have spread from US-America to many other places and where many women also take to the streets against colonial and racist domination, are also part of the common struggle against patriarchy and racism.

All over the world, women are fighting against 5000 years of patriarchal oppression. As a result of this thousand-year-old development of patriarchal mentality, the capitalist nation states are now trying to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to control and subjugate society even more. In doing so, they are mainly attacking women, because we are the centre of society. The situation of women in the 21st century is very worrying. It requires deep and radical responses that go to the roots of the problems.

In Rojava, as in all Kurdistan, women are directly attacked by the nation states. We can see this clearly in the situation of women in occupied areas by the Turkish state, such as Afrin. Every day there are reports of women being abducted or murdered by the jihadist mercenary groups supported by the Turkish state, with NATO and Russia in the back. In recent weeks, we have seen a group of women being held in the mercenaries' prisons in occupied Afrin under inhumane conditions.

In Turkey, the arrests of the activists of the women's association Rosa and the parliamentarian Leyla Güven are a new example of the fascist coup by the Erdogan regime, which focuses on attacking women. In Iraq, we are witnessing the bombing of the self-governing refugee camp Maxmur and the surrounding villages. In Iran, political prisoners such as Zeyneb Jalalian continue to be held in conditions that seriously endanger their health.
However, these are just a few of the many more cases of the far greater number of crimes of violence against women that occur on a daily basis.

In Rojava we are attacked mainly because the revolution that is taking place here is a women's revolution. Because we have imposed an alternative system to capitalism and nation states. We are resisting patriachy, capitalism, nation state, racism and the destruction of the nature. Resistance is life in the face of death, which the patriarchal mentality and system of capitalist modernity brings us every day.

The 21st century is the century of women's revolution. Because just as the origin of our oppression is the same, our attitude and our struggle must be a common one. The connections between women worldwide, the organisation of a common resistance is necessary. We must put an end to the patriarchal mentality in order to build a society where people live together democratically, where the freedom of women and nature is guaranteed.

The struggle of women today in Switzerland and the struggle of women in Rojava are connected. We are fighting in different places, but for the same goals.

We send you revolutionary greetings and strength from Rojava to build together and in all parts of the world a world in which we as women are free and with it our societies.

Jin, jiyan, azadî!”