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Syria arrests 100 Kurds after New Year
clashes
28.3.2006
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DAMASCUS, March
27, - More than 100 people were arrested last
week in northern Syria (Kurdistan-Syria) when a
demonstration by thousands of Kurds celebrating
their New Year turned violent, a human rights
activist said Monday.
"Cases are being brought against 36 of the people
arrested including some minors," said lawyer
Mustapha Suleiman, who witnessed last week's
ill-fated protest in Aleppo.
"They are accused of attacking the public interest,
inciting confessionalism and violently resisting
(Syrian security forces)," he said in a statement.
Last Monday, about 3,000 Kurds had gathered in
Aleppo to celebrate Newroz, carrying candles and
Kurdish flags, when police fired tear-gas and
demonstrators hurled stones.
In March 2004, bloody clashes initially sparked by a
riot between rival football fans pitted mainly
Kurdish protestors against security forces and Arab
tribesmen in Aleppo and Qameshli, another northern
town.
Forty people were killed in several days of
violence, according to Kurdish sources, although
Syrian authorities said 25 people died.
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch,
Syria's Kurdish minority, which makes up an
estimated 10 percent of a population of 18.1 million
people, is regularly discriminated against.
Around 120,000 Syrian Kurds were stripped of their
citizenship after the country's 1962 census and have
never regained it.
AFP
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