On Monday, one of the leading French newspapers, Le Monde, has written about the life stories of the Kurdish victims who lost their lives during the deadly attack in Paris on 23 December.

A French journalist, Christophe Ayad, writing for Le Monde, said that Evîn Goyî (Emine Kara), one of the victims of the Paris attack, was one of the heroines of the Kurdish national movement.

In the column, the life of Goyî is shared, from her village burning down in the early 1990s, through years of bloody conflict in Turkey, to her years as a Kurdish language teacher in the refugee camp of Makhmour, her fight against ISIS and eventually her arrival to Paris as a refugee.

Ayad wrote that Goyî never revealed her past as a fighter to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless people (Ofpra) because it rejects applications from people who fought with the PKK or the YPG in Syria.

Ayad drew similarities between Evîn Goyî and Sakine Cansız, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who was assassinated in Paris in 2013.

“This 48-year-old woman, also known by her alias Evin Goyi, was one of the heroines of the Kurdish national movement that emerged from the ranks of the PKK, currently at war with the Turkish state and with the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) organization,” Ayad said.

The French journalist paid attention to the PKK’s inclusion of many women in its leadership positions, including in its armed wing. “This is not merely a gender equality policy, but also a strong feminist commitment, which is one of the ideological pillars of the movement – along with ecology and Marxist-oriented communalism – and contributes to its aura in Western leftist and ultra-leftist circles.”

Ayad also drew a portrait of Mir Perwer (Şirin Aydın) who was arrested at the time of the crackdown against Kurdish mayors in 2015-2016, and arrived in Paris in 2021, leaving behind a wife and a 6-year-old child.

“He was an extraordinary young man, who wore his heart on his sleeve, someone who was secular and generous,” Ayad quoted Perwer’s friend Victoria Tsamboucas as saying.

The gunman, identified as William M., killed Evîn Goyî, Mîr Perwer and Abdurrahman Kızıl on Friday during an attack on a Kurdish Cultural Centre in Paris.