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More
than 50 Kurdish detainees have begun a hunger strike
to protest "inhuman treatment and torture" they
suffer in a northern Syrian jail, a human rights
activist said Saturday.
Anwar al-Bunni, a lawyer and a member of the Human
Rights Association in Syria, said the detainees,
including 10 women, belong to the outlawed Kurdish
Workers Party, PKK. They were arrested in May 2004
in a campaign against the PKK following an
improvement in Syrian-Turkish relations and have not
yet been brought to trial.
In a faxed statement, al-Bunni said the Kurds, all
Syrian citizens, are forced to sleep on the floor
and endure daily beatings. They began the hunger
strike Tuesday at the Adra prison 20 kilometers (12
miles) north of Damascus, he said.
Syria's crackdown on the PKK includes the Dec. 26
conviction of a Kurdish man for belonging to the
outlawed group. He was sentenced to four years in
prison.
It was the first conviction in Syria of a member of
the PKK, whose leader Abdullah Ocalan is imprisoned
in Turkey.
The conviction appeared to be an attempt by Syria to
further consolidate its relations with Turkey, which
remained strained for much of the 1980s and 1990s
when Turkey accused Syria of harboring Turkish Kurd
guerrillas, including Ocalan.
Relations improved after 1998 when Syria, bowing to
Turkish pressure, expelled Ocalan. The following
year Ocalan was captured and imprisoned in Turkey.
There are about 1.5 million Kurds in Syria, Turkey's
southern neighbor, including 160,000 who are denied
citizenship in Syria, a nation of 18.5 million. They
have long complained they lack basic rights and say
the government neglects the region of northern Syria
where they live.
AP
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