From captivity to martyrdom... the story of martyr Bêrîtan Hamo

SHINDA AKRAM/NEWS DESK

Bêrîtan Hamo ... Kurdish woman who had overcome and broken all the worn-out restrictions and laws imposed on women, and began to struggle to protect the country and land first and then protect herself and women of her compatriot.

This young fighter was born in Serê Kaniyê in 1992-this date symbolizes magnificently to the Kurdish people- as the struggler of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement, Bêrîtan Dersim, was martyred this year after a commando operation.

Bêrîtan Dersim, a fighter in the Kurdistan Liberation Movement, was martyred that year when she confronted an attack that Turkey and the Peshmerga had launched in southern Kurdistan. Her martyrdom was the result of a guerrilla operation, choosing to hover like a vulture in the sky than falling in captivity,  as she preferred to die on these rocky mountains than falling captive.

This commando operation gave an incentive to Kurdish women who began joining the ranks of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement and formed a large army of women defending the Kurdish cause.

That year, a girl was born in the region of Serê Kaniyê, whose family planned to call her after the fighter Bêrîtan, until she became known as Bêrîtan Hamo.

Bêrîtan mother, Sabo, says she named her daughter because she admired Bêrîtan Dersim's courage and good character.

Bêrîtan Hamo lived in a family known for her attachment to the Kurdish cause. She had two sisters and five brothers, and was raised within a middle-class and agriculture-dependent family to secure income.

The difficult conditions that prevailed in the Kurdish areas as a result of the deliberate disregard of the Baathist regime drove the Kurdish families to embark on long journeys to settle in the internal governorates where job opportunities were available.

This was the case with the Bêrîtan family, which traveled in 2004 to the Syrian capital of Damascus, where Bêrîtan ceased her primary education.

After several years of work, the family did not stop activities that served the Kurdish cause and the freedom movement. The revolution of freedom in western Kurdistan erupted in 2012, a year after the beginning of popular movement in Syria in 2011, which later turned into a crisis and an international war.

With the start of the revolution, the family returned to Rojava, which gave the chance to young Bêrîtan to join the ranks of the revolution, perhaps complementing what Bêrîtan Dirsem had begun, as she was labeled after her.

Bêrîtan completed what she was doing in Damascus. She continued to organize the youth and encourage them to join the People's and Women's Protection Units. She trained many of them on how to take up arms and refilled their ideas with the ideology of freedom.

Bêrîtan was characterized by her flexible style and was able to build an ideal character for women to follow in Rojava and northern Syria.

Bêrîtan, with her leadership roles in Women's Protection Units, participated in dozens of military campaigns aimed at liberating occupied areas in northern Syria where mercenary groups had entered, such as Nasra and Daesh. She also participated in campaigns to liberate the region from the Syrian regime.

One of her comrades, Çavreş a fighter in the People's Protection Units, says that shortly after fighter Bêrîtan took her place as a member of the Military Council of the Women's Protection Units, increasing her role in joining and training the new members.

Serê Kaniyê fateful battle!

Anti-revolutionary attacks against the Rojava revolution began from the town of Serê Kaniyê, which was attacked by the Jabhit al-Nasra (now Hayet Tahrir al-Sham) in 2013 with direct and frank Turkish support.

These attacks were a real threat to the revolution of Rojava, so the people of the region responded with all force till they were a failure.

Bêrîtan took part in this battle, and was once injured after fierce and violent battles against mercenaries, and was subsequently captured by mercenary groups with a number of her comrades.

Her detention continued for a period of time until a prisoner exchange was held between the Protection Units and Jabhit al-Nasra, under which Bêrîtan Hamo got out of captivity and inhaled the air of freedom.

Later, she returned home to visit her family. Her mother, Sabo, remembers that her daughter, Bêrîtan, asked her to put henna on her hair. After putting the henna, she washed her hair quickly and did not let Henna go until she dried up because her friends called her and said that battles broke out in Serê Kaniyê villages and she must come immediately.

She did not spend much time on her way there until she reached the engagement areas, her companion Amara says, “she was fighting without taking a breath,” she had treated many of her wounded comrades in the battlefield, and Bêrîtan was one of the wounded.

She did not stop for a moment, until the last moment when she was wounded and martyred while she was still on the battlefield. By that time, Bêrîtan Hamo whose nom de guerre is Tekoşîn Welat becoming the martyr of the nation on 24 May 2014 in the village of Rawiya where many long-term battles took place, martyr Bêrîtan had a long record of braveries in the ranks of People’s and Women’s Protection Units during the resistance of Serê Kaniyê.

J.O

ANHA