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Syria: Kurds arrested in protest over lack
of citizenship
5.10.2006
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DAMASCUS, October
5, -- More than a dozen Kurds were arrested on
Thursday as hundreds of riot police and security
officers armed with tear gas and batons prevented a
demonstration calling for the restoration of
citizenship to an estimated 300,000 stateless Kurds
living in Syria.
"We denounce the police and security services'
abnormal use of force against what was a peaceful
civilian rally," Meshal Temo, spokesman for the
Kurdish Future Party, said. Future Party was one of
three illegal Kurdish political parties that
organised the demonstration.
About 2,000 Kurdish and Arab demonstrators had been
expected to protest at a busy roundabout in central
Damascus but most were prevented from gathering by
security officers who formed a cordon around the
area, organisers say.
Demonstrators who were detained were all released
shortly afterward, according to Kurdish activists.
The protest was to mark the 44th anniversary of a
survey in 1962 that stripped an estimated 120,000
Kurds in the north-eastern Hassake governorate,
bordering Turkey and Iraq, of their citizenship.
Their Syrian national status was taken away on
grounds that they had not been born in Syria.
Since then, Syria's Kurdish population has roughly
trebled to about 1.5 million, making Kurds by far
the second-largest ethnic minority in the country.
The majority are recognised as citizens, but about
220,000 Kurds are classified as foreigners, meaning
they cannot own property, attend state universities
or work in the public sector. They do, however, have
access to public services.
Another 75,000 Kurds live in Syria without any
official identification cards, meaning they have no
access to public healthcare or education and cannot
travel without official permission.
Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad has made repeated
pledges to resolve the issue of Kurdish citizenship
over the past two years.
Meanwhile, a witness told AFP, a planned
demonstration of Kurds who were demanding Syrian
nationality was blocked by police on Thursday in
Damascus.
Several dozen demonstrators were prevented from
gathering near government buildings in the Syrian
capital by police who had deployed in the area, they
said.
"Authorities forcefully prevented demonstrators from
gathering by beating them," said a member of the
coordinating committee, which comprised three banned
Kurdish parties, on condition of anonymity.
"The demonstrators numbered around 500," the source
said, adding that some arrests had been made.
The protest was aimed at "recovering Syrian
nationality," obtaining "a democratic solution for
the Kurdish cause in Syria within the framework of
national unity" and "the end of political
discrimination," he said.
It was also organized to coincide with the 44th
anniversary of a census that was taken in Hassakeh,
in the northeast of Syria (Kurdistan-Syria) in 1962,
following which authorities withdrew Syrian
nationality from around 120,000 Kurds in the region.
A congress of the ruling Baath party in June 2005
called for a "settlement of the problem of the 1962
census organized in Hassakeh and to work for the
development of the region" in northern Syria
(Kurdistan-Syria) that is home to most of the
country's 1.5 million Kurds.
Kurdish officials have long protested that tens of
thousands of Kurds were deprived of Syrian
nationality as well as their political and civil
rights by the census in which they were not
registered.
Kurds make up around nine percent of Syria's
population.
irinnews org | AFP
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