THEIR DAY JOB is fighting so-called Islamic State in northern Syria, but the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish Constitution hasn’t gone unnoticed by these female troops fighting for their own liberation.
The US-backed Bob Crow brigade, a group of British and Irish volunteers embedded with Kurdish forces in northern Syria, tweeted its support for the proposed changes to the Irish constitution earlier this week.
This week saw the 33rd anniversary of the enactment of the Eighth Amendment, which introduced a constitutional ban on abortion in the Republic of Ireland.
“International Freedom Battalion in solidarity with our sisters in Ireland fighting to #Repealthe8th,” it tweeted, along with a picture of two female soldiers posing above a banner that reads:
Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban [no freedom without female emancipation].
Today it tweeted as Gaeilge: “Great piece on us from Nós magazine, well done! Great magazine.”
The International Freedom Battalion comprise international volunteers from Europe, North America and Australia who say they are fighting to defend the “Rojava revolution” of an egalitarian, liberal society sought by the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The SDF comprise Kurdish and Arab fighters, but say they are now facing attack by a coalition of Isis and Turkish military forces.
The group, which fights with the Syrian Democratic Forces, recently successfully pushed Isis out of Manbij.
Their campaign was halted by Turkey, who intervened after five years on the sidelines of the Syria Civil War to ensure the SDF forces do not join up with other Kurdish forces in north-west Syria.
The incursion was painted as an anti-Isis invasion, but international analysts point out that the border between Turkish and Isis forces remains open, and Turkish military operations appear to concentrate on the anti-Isis forces, which it labels “terrorists”.
Turkey denies that Kurds are even a separate people, instead insisting they are “mountain Turks that lost their language”.
The group is affiliated to the socialist International Freedom Battalion, and also posted a picture of two balaclava-clad soldiers standing before a mural of James Connolly’s emblematic plough and the stars.
The image is in solidarity with Dublin Bus drivers, who are in the middle of a series of strikes in pursuit of a 15% pay rise.
The Bob Crow Brigade is named in honor of a famous English trade union activist who died in 2014.
It takes its inspiration from the International Brigade, which fought against Franco’s fascist forces in Spain in the 1930s.
Read: We asked every TD if they want to repeal the Eighth Amendment – here’s what they said
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