Feride Harman was a guerrilla in the mountains of Dersim. She opposed tyranny with gun in hand. She was captured. The oligarchy’s system took away her weapon.
But did it really? Was Feride really unarmed?
No, she sought out the greatest weapon that comes naturally to every victim of oppression who resists tyranny, and she embraced that weapon. This is one of the statements she made in one of her last letters addressed to our Front: “The Death Fast period in particular has been a great turning point for me. It was a period in which I saw my own strength. In particular I drew strength from the way that heroes were created when they were put in cells, and also both inside and the prisons…
Their strength came from this: they experienced the December 19 massacre, but they never gave in to tyranny.
They were thrown in the cells; again they did not bow down to tyranny.
While Feride was on the Death Fast, she was released on August 23, 2002. She did not give in to the state’s attempt at bribery; on the contrary she rejected the bribery, tied on the headband and turned it into a resistance banner waving in the middle of Istanbul.
Those who come and do not see the banner or the willpower are doomed to be erased from politics, irrespective of whether they are in power or in the opposition. Because politics is formed by the war between the tyrants and the oppressed. Feride is a heroine of the poor, the oppressed, our people. She resisted imperialism and fascism; that point is clear; Those who killed Feride are the representatives of imperialism and fascism; Those who remain silent about the murder of Feride are servants of the imperialist and fascist system, in one form or another.
Our comrade Feride Harman was born in September 1973 in Akcadag, Malatya Province. She finished high school at Kurecik. Her father is a retired teacher, her mother a housewife. She had eight brothers and sisters. Hers was like any one of the tens of millions of families that you would encounter in any part of Anatolia. Condemned to poverty, their national honour trampled on, experiencing repression, bans and punishments starting from primary school, suffering from tyranny like tens of millions of our young people, she became a revolutionary. In 1991 she became acquainted with our Front. In 1992 she became more active in the struggle. In 1993 she joined the Dersim Ibrahim Erdogan Rural SPB (Armed Propaganda Unit). She was a guerrilla for about four years. Then she was taken prisoner. During six years of captivity she did not give in to tyranny, when the system tried to intimidate her she developed and strengthened herself further.
As a resister in the 6th Death Fast Team she bore this strength for a year and a half, writing “victory or death!” on her banner of resistance.
Her last request was to be buried with a handful of soil from Dersim.
