Andrea Wolf (activist)

Andrea Wolf (Kurdish alias: Ronahî) (Born January 15, 1965 in Munich ; † October 23, 1998 at Çatak ) was a German, left-wing radical activist. She belonged to the environment of the Red Army faction and was a member of the paramilitary banned underground organization People's Liberation Army of Kurdistan .

Engagement and political activity in Bavaria

Andrea Wolf was head of the school in her grammar school. She later became a member of an SPD youth group and an assistant in the Youth Red Cross . Contacts with the radical left-wing scene led to her first arrests in the early 1980s: After being squatted , she spent a day in custody. Participation in a demonstration on April 4, 1981 resulted in four days of pre-trial detention. Together with her twin brother Tom, she soon joined the autonomous movement Freizeit 81 . Because of her involvement in arson attacks on a branch of the Dresdner Bank and a secondary school, as well as several damage to property through graffiti , she was sentenced together with her brother to a prison term of 18 months in October 1981; both were actually imprisoned for about six months. In November 1984 Tom Wolf died of alleged suicide after falling out of a window. After regularly taking part in demonstrations against fascism and globalization , Andrea Wolf campaigned against the planned Wackersdorf reprocessing plant .

Time in Frankfurt

After the decline in autonomous activities in Munich, Wolf moved to Frankfurt in 1986 . There, in the summer of 1987, she began further squatting and supporting a hunger strike by female inmates in Berlin. Another arrest followed in September 1987 because she was accused of planning several bomb attacks; after two months in detention, she was released. Wolf then joined the autonomous group No Peace . She committed further squatting to show solidarity with hunger strikers imprisoned members of the RAF.

In addition to these direct actions , Wolf also dealt intellectually with autonomous ideas: For example, in 1990 she spoke at a demonstration about the importance of criminal membership in a terrorist organization ( Section 129a of the Criminal Code ) and was a founding member of a discussion forum against political imprisonment.

Political trips abroad

During the protests against the world economic summit in Munich in 1992, contacts arose with foreign radical left groups, mainly from Central America and Kurdistan . In 1993, Wolf traveled to El Salvador for several weeks to develop contacts with the resistance fighters there against the military dictatorship of the time. In 1994 he made another political trip to the USA and Guatemala , where her mother Lilo Wolf († April 23, 2013 in Guatemala City ) lived since the death of Tom Wolf .

Escape to Kurdistan

Upon her return, the investigative authorities brought Andrea Wolf into connection with the RAF's bombing attack on the Weiterstadt correctional facility . However, she herself denied both her participation and then membership in the RAF. Andrea Wolf's role as a close friend of Klaus Steinmetz , an undercover agent for the protection of the constitution , also remained unresolved . Some of Andrea Wolf's political comrades accused her of having approached Steinmetz out of recklessness and of revealing secrets. This also very drastic criticism made Andrea Wolf's situation in the scene increasingly unbearable. When an arrest warrant was issued against her in the summer of 1995, she went underground and prepared to flee to Kurdistan, also because of the lack of support in Germany.

Ronahî

At the end of 1996 she finally fled and joined the Kurdish underground organization PKK ; she chose as an aliasRonahî(Kurdish: light). After spending a few weeks with the PKK cadre, she joined the ARGK and was a member of a unit of the YAJK , the Free Women's Association of Kurdistan . Here she received military training, first fighting against the Kurdish Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and later against the Turkish army .

On October 23, 1998 Andrea Wolf is said to have been captured by the Turkish army in a battle and murdered by an officer. Since then she has been venerated as a martyr by the PKK. According to the report on mass graves in Turkey by the human rights association , the body of Andrea Wolf and 40 other bodies of PKK fighters were left behind in a cave near the village of Andiçen in the Çatak district and the cave was then blown up.

Her mother and a group of supporters demanded that Turkey clarify the circumstances of Andrea Wolf and the PKK members who died with her. When Turkey failed to open an appropriate investigation, the mother sued the European Court of Human Rights . After several years of proceedings, the ECHR condemned Turkey in June 2010 “because it had not conducted an adequate and effective investigation into the fate of the plaintiff's daughter”. Because the assumption that Andrea Wolf was "only killed after her capture, based on legitimate suspicions but not supported by evidence", there was no further conviction for torture and homicide.

Web links

• "In the jungle of the cities, in the mountains of Kurdistan ..., life and struggle of Andrea Wolf". Self-published, Berlin 1999. ( Memento from October 26, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
• How did Andrea Wolf die? European Court of Human Rights condemns Turkey

Individual evidence

1. ^ Arrest warrant against Andrea Wolf, in Die Redaktionsgruppe , p. 27. ( Memento from December 21, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ In the jungle of the cities, in the mountains of Kurdistan ... Life and Struggle by Andrea Wolf (PDF; 9.3 MB) see pp. 30, 40, 157 nadir.org. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
3. ↑ In the jungle of the cities, in the mountains of Kurdistan ... Life and Struggle by Andrea Wolf (PDF; 9.3 MB) see pp. 43, 44, 60 nadir.org. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
4. ↑ In the jungle of the cities, in the mountains of Kurdistan ... Life and Struggle by Andrea Wolf (PDF; 9.3 MB) see pp. 49, 63, 71 nadir.org. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
5. ↑ In the jungle of the cities, in the mountains of Kurdistan ... Life and Struggle by Andrea Wolf (PDF; 9.3 MB) see pp. 73, 102, 158 nadir.org. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
6. ↑ Friends of Andrea Wolf: We mourn our friend Lilo Wolf. Report on the Libertad website ! dated April 23, 2013 (accessed September 13, 2019).
7. ^ "Focus Online" on the role of Andrea Wolf in the Steinmetz spy affair
8. ^ Report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung from August 31, 2011
9. ↑ Report on mass graves ( Memento of March 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (Turkish; PDF; 339 kB)
10. ↑ Nick Brauns: How did Andrea Wolf die? European Court of Human Rights condemns Turkey ( Memento from January 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Junge Welt , September 9, 2010