March 15, 2026
Speech by Rathy Barthlote at Melbourne Radical Women International Women’s Day event
Capitalism is femicidal: Women resisters speak out
Rathy is a Tamil refugee, who escaped Sri Lanka’s genocide and has become a leading force in Melbourne’s vibrant refugee movement. She sees women’s leadership as vital for everyone’s liberation.
Revolutionary Women’s Day greetings to everyone.
On March 8, the world celebrates what it calls International
Women’s Day.
But I want to ask a question.
In a world where wars are
raging…
In a world where women are not safe…
In a world where refugee women are humiliated at
borders…
What exactly are we celebrating?
I did not come here today to speak about flowers.
I did not come here to speak about greetings.
I came here to speak the truth.
Behind the wars of this world,
behind the refugee camps of this world,
behind the tears of women,
there is a system.
That system is capitalism.
March 8 — International Women’s Day — is not a “Happy
Women’s Day.”
It is a day of uprising.
It is the day when factory women, migrant
women, and working women told the world: our
lives have value.
But today I ask:
Are women’s lives truly valued?
Wars are exploding across the world.
The people who start those wars are men in power.
But the people who pay the price for those wars are women.
A Palestinian mother runs through bombings carrying her
child in her arms.
In Sri Lanka, Tamil women still stand on the streets
searching for their disappeared loved ones even after genocide.
In Sudan, civil war pushes women into refugee camps.
In Afghanistan,
women’s right to education is taken away.
Recently, in Iran,
165 schoolchildren lost their lives.
A mother who sent her child to school with hope
was forced to receive that child’s body instead.
This is the brutal reality of the world today.
The world is burning.
But who is behind this fire?
Capitalism.
Occupation.
The arms trade.
Oil politics.
Border politics.
This system does not protect women. This system uses
women’s bodies, women’s
labour, and women’s tears.
That is why I say:
Capitalism kills women.
Refugee women are the double victims of this system.
On one side
war.
On the other side —
immigration laws.
When a refugee woman crosses a border, she is treated like a criminal.
She is portrayed as a threat.
But what is the truth?
She is running to save her life.
She is searching for a future for her child.
I did not come
here today to shout a political slogan.
I came here to speak a truth.
A refugee woman is not a statistic.
She is a human being.
She is a mother.
She is a worker.
She is a leader.
We often hear that women are weak.
But a woman who crosses wars,
crosses oceans,
crosses refugee camps,
and survives the trials of laws and borders —
is she weak?
No.
She is a revolution.
On International Women’s Day we must ask:
Do we give women flowers?
Or do we give them justice?
Is it a just world
where a refugee woman must wait 13
years for permanent residency?
Is it a humane
world where a Palestinian mother must bury her child every day?
Is it a democratic world where a Tamil mother must search
for her disappeared son for 15 years? No.
Today we must make a commitment.
Without the liberation of women,
no revolution is complete.
Without the rights of refugee women,
no Women’s Day is real.
We demand safety.
We demand permanence.
We demand dignity.
We demand justice.
This is not charity.
This is a right.
To every woman here today, I want to say:
Your voice matters.
Your story is political.
Your life is resistance.
We are people who survived genocide.
We survived displacement.
We survived humiliation.
And we are still standing. That is not a miracle.
That is our strength.
Let International Women’s Day be a promise:
Until a refugee woman can live safely,
we will not be silent.
Until women are no longer forced to flee because of war,
we will not stop questioning this system.
We will stand together.
As Tamil women.
As Palestinian women.
As Afghan women.
As women of the world.
We are not asking for sympathy.
We are demanding equality.
We are demanding the right to live.
I say this with pride:
The courage of a woman’s mind
is stronger than the gravity of the earth. Listen
carefully.
You cannot break a woman’s spirit.
You cannot
imprison her with borders.
You cannot silence her with laws.
You cannot destroy her with wars.
Because she is a survivor.
She is history.
She is memory.
She is resistance.
In a mother’s
tears there is revolution.
In the footsteps of a refugee woman there is the future.
In the voice of a displaced woman there is a force that can
shake the world.
We are not broken.
We have not turned to ashes.
We have become fire.
We are not afraid.
We are not silent.
We have risen.
From here today,
a voice must rise.
A voice that crosses borders.
A voice that
crosses refugee camps.
A voice that shakes the walls of parliaments.
Until a refugee woman can live in safety,
we will not stop.
Until a Palestinian mother can sleep without fear,
we will not stop.
Until a Tamil mother finds justice for her disappeared child,
we will not stop.
Every woman gathered here today her life has value. Refugee
women’s lives have value.
On this International Women’s Day,
we make a promise:
You cannot silence us.
You cannot destroy us.
You cannot stop us.
We will rise.
We will fight.
We will win.