Ivana Hoffmann: On the right side

Hoffmann was since the age of 13 in the migrant-dominated communist youth organization Young Struggle in Duisburg and then active in the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) from Turkey. Nine months ago she dropped out of school to join an international brigade of MLKP, under the code name Avasin Tekosin Gunes, which fights together with the Kurdish population and YPG defense units in the Kurdish self-governing territory of Rojava against the IS.

Many Kurdish and communist organizations participated in the funeral procession to the cemetery in Duisburg-Meiderich. Chairman of the Democratic Union in Rojava Party (PYD), Salih Muslim, and a representative of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Party of Peoples (HDP) and member of the Turkish Parliament, Figs Yüksedag, came to the funeral service. “We fight in Rojava for humanity. Ivana Hoffmann was a beacon of light to the nations,” said the Turkish socialist Yüksedag.

“The struggle in Rojava against the IS bands — the servants of the imperialists — lead to an internationalist resistance,” said Salih Muslim, who also recalled the Australian Ashley Johnston and the British Erik Scurfield, who had fallen a few weeks ago. Both belonged to the volunteer formation “Lion of Rojava” fighting on the side of YPG.

On Friday, the police seized Hoffmann’s body temporarily for autopsy in connection with a mandatory investigation for killing a German citizen abroad. “What her daughter has done is actually punishable. But at least she has fought on the right side,” commented a police officer, according to the Duisburg Solidarity Committee.

Hoffmann was the first federal citizen who lost her life in the fight against IS. But in October last year, a Turkish citizen also from Duisburg and member of the MLKP, also died in Kobani. According to the Mirror, around 80 people from Germany now participate with the Kurdish militias in the fight against IS. The “potential danger posed by this group of people” was quantitatively less, “but not assessed qualitatively assessed than that of Syrian jihadist fighters,” the Interior Ministry had already warned in October. After Mirror report, the Attorney General now checks the possibility of criminal action against the MLKP, which is not on the EU terror list.

“It could be a case against supporters of the organization with membership or supporting a foreign terrorist organization,” says Spiegel Online. What is meant is probably the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as its offshoot, the YPG.

Translated by Greg Butterfield