LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A Lubbock artist is mourning the death of her relative, Yanar Mohammed, president and co-founder of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, who was shot and killed outside her home in Baghdad on Monday.
The organization announced Mohammed was killed by “senior military forces.” No group has claimed responsibility for her death.
Born in 1960s Iraq to her mother, a teacher, and her father, an engineer who brought electricity and water to his village, Mohammed knew she was destined for something big.
Wars and hard times pushed her to move to Lebanon for college and later immigrate to Canada to start a career in architecture and her family.
“Then she thought, what am I doing with architecture? I need to do something that’s important. So, she picked up and she went to Iraq,” her Lubbock relative said.
Soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mohammed travelled across the Tigris River by rowboat to get back to her homeland, and her destiny began to take shape.
“So, the work starts. She saves one woman. She puts her away somewhere in a friend’s house. She pays for her education. She nurtures them. And the women start flocking to her,” her relative said. “It’s like, nobody’s helping us. The government is gone. Nobody’s there to kind of, we can rely on.’ So, that’s how her work started,” she said.
Mohammed co-founded the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq. Over the following two decades, she built a network of safehouses, rescuing women from violence and supporting their education.
“At the end of her life, she probably had, I don’t know how many safe homes because she kept them a secret. She didn’t want anybody to know about them. These women’s lives were in her hands. She fed the hungry and she clothed the ones who were discarded,” her relative said.
Mohammed received death threats throughout her work. When family members raised concerns, her relative said Mohammed pointed to the women she had helped.
“She’d say, ‘Oh, it’s nothing. You know, just come and see my organization and see all the women and their smiles on their faces. And how happy they are in this place. Because they have a community, they have a future,’” her relative said.
Mohammed’s Lubbock relative, who asked not to be identified by name due to family still living in Iraq, said she has received support from both her college and artist communities since Mohammed’s death.
“Can I do that sort of stuff? There’s no way. I’m just an artist looking for a simple life. I paint my paintings and I garden and I go teach at the university. But to do what she does when she knows that she’s threatening the culture, that they’re going to come after her because she’s saving all these women that they don’t want. That’s the brave thing that she did. And she did it up to the last moment of her life,” she said.
She said she has shifted her mourning to a focus on remembrance.
“She’s a martyr now. And she’s perceived as a martyr. Yesterday, I cried all day. Today, I thought, I’m going to take my black clothes off. That’s a symbol of my mourning. And I’m going to put white clothes on. Because we have to remember her with joy. We have to remember her with courage,” she said.
She hopes Mohammed’s courage inspires men and women around the world.
“Life has to have a reason. If you go about life sleeping, waking up, eating, drinking, then you repeat all of that again the next day, there is no point. But if you have some sort of destination, then life becomes so beautiful,” her relative said.
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