The faculty, students, and staff of the universities in Rojava/ North and East Syria, issued a statement on Saturday calling on their friends, colleagues, and comrades to stand with Rojava and raise their voice.
Basque trade union LAB released a statement expressing their strongest solidarity with the faculty, students, and workers of the universities of Rojava / North and East Syria.
LAB stressed that defending the universities of Rojava is inseparable from defending the right of peoples to self-determination, education as a tool of emancipation, and a social model based on feminism, ecological life, and radical democracy.
“From the LAB trade union section of the University of the Basque Country (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea), a class-based and feminist union, we wish to express our strongest solidarity with the faculty, students, and workers of the universities of Rojava / North and East Syria, who today are forced to leave their classrooms to defend their universities, their cities, and the political and social project they have built in the face of war and permanent aggression.
The universities of Rojava —in Raqqa, Kobanê, and Qamishlo— were established under extreme conditions, in the midst of conflict, where higher education had previously been denied. These institutions have been fundamental in guaranteeing access to education for young people, grounding learning in women’s liberation, ecological life, and democratic, communal forms of social organization.
For more than fifteen years, the people of Rojava have collectively built an alternative project in opposition to capitalism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism, under constant pressure and repeated attacks by imperial powers, regional states, and colonial forces. Through self-organization, self-defense, and popular diplomacy, they have carved out a space of hope for oppressed peoples in the region and across the world.
Today, this project is under brutal attack. Fascist forces of the Syrian regime, structures linked to an Al-Qaeda lineage rebranded as state authority, and mercenary forces backed by regional and global powers, together with direct aggression by the Turkish state, are carrying out a coordinated offensive aimed at destroying this political and social process.
We denounce that the situation has reached an extreme level of gravity, marked by unfolding dynamics of genocide and feminicide. University buildings have become improvised shelters for displaced people struggling to survive the winter without basic resources. Turkish drone attacks near the University of Rojava in Qamishlo, the isolation of students from their families, and the total siege of Kobanê —without access to water, electricity, or essential supplies— are part of a strategy of war against life, education, and popular organization.
LAB affirms clearly that defending the universities of Rojava is inseparable from defending the right of peoples to self-determination, education as a tool of emancipation, and a social model based on feminism, ecological life, and radical democracy.
We call on the working class, trade unions, educational communities, and popular movements to organize active solidarity with Rojava: to break the silence, to denounce state complicity, and to strengthen the international networks that sustain resistance.
Internationalist solidarity is part of the peoples’ self-defense. From Euskal Herria, we reaffirm our commitment to Rojava and to its struggle for freedom, women’s liberation, ecological life, and a democratic, communal society.
Rojava is not alone.”