Syrian Kurds Face Life In Prison for Demanding Rights
Oread Daily | 10.02.2003 21:48
SYRIAN KURDS FACE LIFE IN PRISON FOR DEMANDING RIGHTS
A Syrian military judge has decided that Marwan Osman and Hassan Saleh two Syrian Kurdish leaders will be tried before a state security court in Damascus for staging a sit-in outside the nation's parliament, one of their lawyers said on Sunday. Saleh and Osman, leaders of the small Yekiti Kurdish party, organized a demonstration in December in which about 150 Kurds demanded full citizenship and equal rights with the rest of the Arab country's population. The security court trial, whose verdict cannot be appealed, "is a step backwards" based on the emergency laws in force in Syria, the lawyer said. If found guilty, they face terms of up to life imprisonment. Their lawyers had asked for Osman and Saleh to be deferred to a normal court. Saleh, 55, and Othman, 45, were arrested in December after taking part in the Kurdish protest -- the first of its kind -- in front of the People's Council, the Syrian parliament. They also met with House Speaker Abdel Qader Kaddoura.
A spokesman for the banned Kurdish Yikiti group, leader Abdel Baqi Youssef, said that the charges (inciting religious and ethnic discord) the two Yikiti leaders now face were "fabrications" and that Hassan Saleh and Marwan Othman were only calling for respecting "the rights of the Kurds in Syria as a non-Arab ethnic group." The two Kurds were seeking "recognition in the (Syrian) Constitution of their language as well as restoring the nationality" of an estimated 200,00 Kurds in the predominantly Arab country. The Kurds who took part in the protest, carried placards with messages calling for "a lifting of the embargo on the Kurdish culture and language" and urging Syria "to become the nation of all its sons (including) Arabs and Kurds". The Kurdish Yakiti party which led the protest issued a statement calling on the government "to change its attitude towards the Kurds by treating them on an equal footing with other citizens". "We must remove the barriers imposed on the Kurdish language and culture and recognize the existence of the Kurdish nationality within the unity of the country," their statement said. "Our people have endured sufferings and poverty because of this policy of discrimination that has been imposed for several decades," the statement said. The party's statement points out Kurds hold no administrative position in Syria, where they represent 12 percent (2.5 million inhabitants) of the total Syrian population.
The repression of the Kurds began in 1962, with a controversial census undertaken by Syria's ruling Baath party in which some 120,000 Kurdish Syrian nationals were stripped of their citizenship overnight. Their offspring were also classified as foreigners or maktoumeen, swelling the population of dispossessed to around 250,000 today. Damascus justified the measure as an attempt to differentiate between Syrian Kurds and illegal Kurdish immigrants who had crossed the border from neighboring Turkey. The Kurds say it was simple discrimination based on the Arabist ideology of the Baath Party.
Thousands of Arabs were resettled in the early 1970s on confiscated Kurdish property in a narrow strip along Syria's border with Turkey. The Arab arrivals were given better state facilities, such as schools and clinics. The Kurds are denied the right to vote, own property, have marriages legally recognized or be treated in public hospitals. They carry special red identity cards and are not allowed passports to travel outside Syria. The names of Kurdish villages and shops were changed into Arabic (Sound hauntingly familiar to Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories). Kurdish is banned from being taught in schools and it is illegal to publish in the language. Parents were pressured to give their children Arabic rather than Kurdish names. "The authorities wanted to erase the Kurdish identity," says Fawaz Kano, a member of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party. "They wanted to make a physical barrier between the Kurds of Syria and the Kurds living in Turkey. So they took our land and dumped the Arabs along the border." Some restrictions were eased in 1970 when Hafez al Assad, the former Syrian president, assumed power. Kurds can now speak their language in public, receive school education, and watch Kurdish singers on Syrian television. In August, President Bashar Assad made what is believed to be the first visit to Kurdish areas by a Syrian leader since the country's independence in 1946. However, Assad did not mention the Kurds in his speech; he spoke of "national unity" and the "need to abide by law and order."
Abdul-Hamid Darwish, head of the Kurdish Progressive and Democratic Party in Syria says the Syrian Kurds do not want separation from Syria. "We do not seek the establishment of a Kurdish area," he said. "We just want to administrate our area and to freely practice our cultural, social and political."
Sources: Albawaba, Kurdistan Observer, Human Rights Action, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, UPI, Reuters Alert, AFP
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A Syrian military judge has decided that Marwan Osman and Hassan Saleh two Syrian Kurdish leaders will be tried before a state security court in Damascus for staging a sit-in outside the nation's parliament, one of their lawyers said on Sunday. Saleh and Osman, leaders of the small Yekiti Kurdish party, organized a demonstration in December in which about 150 Kurds demanded full citizenship and equal rights with the rest of the Arab country's population. The security court trial, whose verdict cannot be appealed, "is a step backwards" based on the emergency laws in force in Syria, the lawyer said. If found guilty, they face terms of up to life imprisonment. Their lawyers had asked for Osman and Saleh to be deferred to a normal court. Saleh, 55, and Othman, 45, were arrested in December after taking part in the Kurdish protest -- the first of its kind -- in front of the People's Council, the Syrian parliament. They also met with House Speaker Abdel Qader Kaddoura.
A spokesman for the banned Kurdish Yikiti group, leader Abdel Baqi Youssef, said that the charges (inciting religious and ethnic discord) the two Yikiti leaders now face were "fabrications" and that Hassan Saleh and Marwan Othman were only calling for respecting "the rights of the Kurds in Syria as a non-Arab ethnic group." The two Kurds were seeking "recognition in the (Syrian) Constitution of their language as well as restoring the nationality" of an estimated 200,00 Kurds in the predominantly Arab country. The Kurds who took part in the protest, carried placards with messages calling for "a lifting of the embargo on the Kurdish culture and language" and urging Syria "to become the nation of all its sons (including) Arabs and Kurds". The Kurdish Yakiti party which led the protest issued a statement calling on the government "to change its attitude towards the Kurds by treating them on an equal footing with other citizens". "We must remove the barriers imposed on the Kurdish language and culture and recognize the existence of the Kurdish nationality within the unity of the country," their statement said. "Our people have endured sufferings and poverty because of this policy of discrimination that has been imposed for several decades," the statement said. The party's statement points out Kurds hold no administrative position in Syria, where they represent 12 percent (2.5 million inhabitants) of the total Syrian population.
The repression of the Kurds began in 1962, with a controversial census undertaken by Syria's ruling Baath party in which some 120,000 Kurdish Syrian nationals were stripped of their citizenship overnight. Their offspring were also classified as foreigners or maktoumeen, swelling the population of dispossessed to around 250,000 today. Damascus justified the measure as an attempt to differentiate between Syrian Kurds and illegal Kurdish immigrants who had crossed the border from neighboring Turkey. The Kurds say it was simple discrimination based on the Arabist ideology of the Baath Party.
Thousands of Arabs were resettled in the early 1970s on confiscated Kurdish property in a narrow strip along Syria's border with Turkey. The Arab arrivals were given better state facilities, such as schools and clinics. The Kurds are denied the right to vote, own property, have marriages legally recognized or be treated in public hospitals. They carry special red identity cards and are not allowed passports to travel outside Syria. The names of Kurdish villages and shops were changed into Arabic (Sound hauntingly familiar to Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories). Kurdish is banned from being taught in schools and it is illegal to publish in the language. Parents were pressured to give their children Arabic rather than Kurdish names. "The authorities wanted to erase the Kurdish identity," says Fawaz Kano, a member of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party. "They wanted to make a physical barrier between the Kurds of Syria and the Kurds living in Turkey. So they took our land and dumped the Arabs along the border." Some restrictions were eased in 1970 when Hafez al Assad, the former Syrian president, assumed power. Kurds can now speak their language in public, receive school education, and watch Kurdish singers on Syrian television. In August, President Bashar Assad made what is believed to be the first visit to Kurdish areas by a Syrian leader since the country's independence in 1946. However, Assad did not mention the Kurds in his speech; he spoke of "national unity" and the "need to abide by law and order."
Abdul-Hamid Darwish, head of the Kurdish Progressive and Democratic Party in Syria says the Syrian Kurds do not want separation from Syria. "We do not seek the establishment of a Kurdish area," he said. "We just want to administrate our area and to freely practice our cultural, social and political."
Sources: Albawaba, Kurdistan Observer, Human Rights Action, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, UPI, Reuters Alert, AFP
The Oread Daily provides daily (Monday-Friday) progressive, left, anti-racist, anarchist, commie, activist, environmental, Marxist, revolutionary, etc. news and information from around the US and around the world.
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