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LONDON, Mar 10 (IPS) - The Syrian government
must put an immediate end to human rights abuses
against Syrian Kurds, Amnesty International said in
a report published Thursday on the eve of the
anniversary of the Qamishli clashes.
More than 30 Kurds were killed in clashes that
spread from a football match between Kurdish and
Arab teams in Qamishli in north-eastern Syria in
March last year. The clashes brought into focus the
plight of Kurds in Syria.
Amnesty says that more than 2,000 people, almost all
of them Kurds, were arrested after the riots.
''Kurdish detainees, including children as young as
12, women, teenage girls and elderly people, were
reportedly tortured and ill-treated,'' the report
says. ''Dozens of Kurdish students were expelled
from their universities and dormitories, reportedly
for participating in peaceful protests.''
Kurds remain a people without a nation, spread
across Turkey which has the largest population,
Iraq, Iran and Syria. Kurds have faced persecution
in all these countries. There are an estimated 1.5
to two million Syrian Kurds.
The abuse of Kurd rights has continued after the
clashes last year, the Amnesty report says. ''The
authorities must open investigations into the
allegations of unlawful killings, deaths resulting
from torture and ill- treatment in custody and
torture of Kurds that have come to light since March
2004,'' Amnesty said in its report.
Since March 2004 there has been a significant
increase in the number of reported deaths of Kurds
as a result of torture and ill-treatment in custody,
the Amnesty report says.
''Five of nine such deaths reported to Amnesty
International in the seven months after March 2004
were of Syrian Kurds,'' the report says. ''There
have also been a number of deaths in suspicious
circumstances of Kurdish military conscripts during
the same period: at least six died, reportedly due
to beatings or shootings by military superiors or
colleagues. No investigation is known to have been
carried out into any of the deaths in either
category.''
The report, which Amnesty says followed several
months' research, also describes the ''systemic
identity-based discrimination suffered by the Syrian
Kurds.'' The report highlights cases of Kurdish
human rights defenders who have sought to promote
rights of the Kurdish population in Syria and
suffered arrest, torture and unfair trial.
''The Syrian authorities must set up an
investigation into the apparently disproportionate
response of the security forces to the March 2004
events,'' said Amnesty International. ''They must
investigate the alleged unlawful killings and deaths
as a result of torture and ill-treatment in custody
and the widespread reports of torture, and propose
remedies to deal with the systemic discrimination
against Kurds as well as other human rights
violations that may have contributed to the tension
and the outburst of violence.''
The Amnesty report also calls on the Syrian
authorities to end the prohibitions on the use of
the Kurdish language in education, the workplace,
official establishments and at private celebrations,
and to allow children to be registered with Kurdish
names and businesses to carry Kurdish names. Amnesty
says several hundred thousand Syrian Kurds are
effectively stateless and, as such, are denied the
full provision of education, employment, health and
other rights enjoyed by Syrian nationals, as well as
being denied the right to have a nationality and
passport.
It has asked for legislation under which prisoners
of conscience have been imprisoned to be brought in
line with Articles 18-22 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to
which Syria has been a party since 1969. That
guarantees the right to freedom of conscience,
expression, assembly and association and the right
to exercise these freedoms without undue
interference. It has asked for independent
investigations into allegations of unlawful killings
and an amendment of legislation on nationality to
find an expeditious solution to the statelessness of
Syrian-born Kurds.
Amnesty International
www.amnesty.org
http://www.ipsnews.net
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