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Syria jails three Kurds for joining banned
Azadi Kurdish party
16.11.2009
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November 16, 2009
DAMASCUS, Syria, — A Syrian court on Sunday
jailed three Kurds for three years each for being
members of a banned political party, a human rights
group said, adding it was the second such verdict in
a week.
Mustafa Jomaa Bakr, Mohammed Saeed Hussein Omar and
Saadoun Mahmoud were found guilty of being members
of the banned Azadi Kurdish party and for having
"fuelled racial dissension," the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights said. |
Juma Bakr, Sheikho, al-Omar |
The three were also
accused of "having undermined the dignity of the
state and having weakened national sentiment," a
statement by the London-based rights watchdog said
The men were all
convicted of being senior members of Azadi. Bakr had
been arrested in January while the other two were
seized in October 2008.
The verdict against them came exactly a week after
another Syrian court sentenced four Kurds to
six-year prison terms each for belonging to the
banned Kurdish Democratic Union Party,www.ekurd.netaccording
to the Syrian Observatory.
The Syrian authorities routinely accuse clandestine
Kurdish parties of separatism even when they
campaign for Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights
within Syrian borders.
More than 2 million Kurds live in Syria, comprising
nine percent of the population. They have long
sought official recognition of the Kurdish language
and culture.
The Kurds live in Syria (Syrian Kurdistan), mainly in the
north bordering Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan region.
They comprise nine percent of the population and
have long sought official recognition of the Kurdish
language and their culture.
Future Movement advocates democracy and equal rights
for Syria's one million Kurdish minority. The
Kurdish language is not allowed to be taught in
schools and tens of thousands of Kurds were denied
citizenship after a 1960s census.
Freedom of expression remains tightly controlled in
Syria, and security forces have sweeping powers of
arrest and detention.
A total 1,500 people were arrested for political
reasons in 2007 and hundreds more who were arrested
in previous years remained in detention,www.ekurd.netaccording
to rights group Amnesty International's 2008 report.
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respective author or news agency, AFP |
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