APPEAL OF WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA
Appeal of women‘s organisations in northeastern Syria to end Turkish occupation in Afrin
We are very concerned about the situation in Afrin. Since the invasion and occupation of Afrin in 2018 by the Turkish state together with jihadist groups and fractions which are supported and backed by the Turkish state we can see a clear rising of violations of human rights and crimes against civilians. Especially women and children are targeted and have to live with the daily fear of sexual violence, being arrested, kidnapped or murdered. Until today the Turkish state continues the demographic change with its genocidal methods against Yezidis and Kurds in Afrin. Crimes against civilians in the occupied areas have to be stopped, investigated and prosecuted.
Therefore women‘s organisations in northeastern Syria made today an appeal to end the Turkish occupation in Afrin and called on the international community, human rights organisations and women‘s movements to form a United Nations fact-finding committee:
Since the beginning of the Turkish occupation of the city of Afrin with the help of its mercenaries, its violations and practices – which fall under the category of war crimes in light of a general international silence - have continued despite the resistance of the people of Afrin against the forced displacement and the systematic demographic change that the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries are seeking.
The people of Afrin are exposed on a daily basis to the most brutal inhuman injuries and systematic violence from which women have suffered greatly as a result of the continued indiscriminate shelling of the al-Shahba areas, the abduction, rape, forced marriage of underage girls and the killing and torture of women in detention camps within the city of Afrin and its occupied villages in order to completely empty the region from its population.
Recent events, following clashes between mercenary groups in the region, have exposed the crimes and abuses taking place in the prisons. Where there were dozens of abducted women, it was found that most of them were local Kurdish women who were naked and physically tortured and sexually abused. This is a gross violation far removed from humanitarian principles and international conventions.
Despite all the practices to which women are subjected and which aim to break the conscious and organised will of women, their insistence on resistance and their struggle to build a free and democratic society have made them a symbol that should be given international attention.
We, as Syrian women, call on the international community, all human rights organisations and women's movements to break their silence and play their part in ending the Turkish occupation, to set up a United Nations committee of inquiry and relevant human rights organisations in order to arrest the perpetrators of these crimes, which are war crimes, and to provide the necessary support to protect women and support their resistance.
31/ 05/ 2020
Kongra Star Rojava
Syrian Women Council
Syriac Women Union
Women Council of Democratic Union Party – PYD
Women‘s coordination of the Autonomous Administration of Jazeera region
Women‘s office of the Syrian Democratic Council – SDC
Women office in the Arab National Authority
Women‘s office of the Future Syria Party
Women council in North and East Syria
SARA organisation again violence against women
Futhermore 20 Syrian media, civil and human rights organisations made an urgent appeal to the United Nations to put an end to the crimes and violations committed by the Turkish occupation and its mercenary factions against the people of Afrin. This appeal you can find in the attachment.
We send you both appeals in order to call attention to the current situation, especially of women, in Afrin.
Kind regards,
Kongra Star Women's Movement with Women Defend Rojava campaign
Contact:
womendefendrojava@protonmail.com
Homepage and social media:
Twitter: @starrcongress
Facebook: Kongra Star Diplomacy
Instagram: @WomenDefend
Mr. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Mrs. Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Mr. Paulo Pinheiro, Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria
After violations and crimes against the defenseless civilians in Afrin region attained their most dramatic and horrible intensity and began to offend their human dignity without the slightest consideration or respect for religious and international laws by the Syrian armed factions that the Turkish intelligence services unleashed to commit all the violations, including the moral ones against the Syrian Kurdish residents of Afrin, men and women, elderly and children, with the aim of forcing them to leave their homes and be displaced, in order to complete Turkey's plans to change the demography of the region and obliterate its Kurdish identity.
After revealing the unethical crimes committed by these mercenary factions, especially against Kurdish girls and women, and the repeated murders committed against the elderly, yesterday, a number of women who were unjustly kidnapped since a long time were found in the basements and detention camps of Firqet Al-Hamzeh, which were broken into and controlled by Al-Ghouta settlers and Ahrar al-Sham factions. The women were in a pitiful state which no laws, customs or societal values would accept.
That is why we, the civil and legal organizations signed below, address you urgently the necessity of:
- Forming a committee to investigate the facts related to crimes and violations committed in Afrin and other areas occupied by Turkey on a daily basis in order to document and refer them to the relevant international authorities to put an end to these crimes and hold those committed them accountable.
-Exerting more pressure on Turkey to carry out its duties and fulfill its responsibilities as an occupying power in providing security and protection for civilians.
- Demanding Turkey to end its illegal military presence in the Syrian areas and exit with its mercenaries and armed factions, asking the Security Council to put those areas under international protection until a comprehensive political solution to the Syrian problem is found.
05/29/2020
The Signatories:
1- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
2- The Kurdish Legal Authority
3- Defense Society for Threatened Peoples-German Branch
4- Kurdish Organization for Human Rights in Syria (DAD)
5- Kurdish Committee for Human Rights (Al-Rased)
6- Violations Documentation Center in North Syria
7- Mahabad Human Rights Organization (MOHR)
8- The Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Austria
9- The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Syria (MAF)
10- Lequlin Center for Legal Studies and Research
11- Yazdina Foundation for Media and Human Rights
12- Syrian Center for Defending Human Rights
13- Human Rights Organization in Syria (MAF)
14- Human Rights Organization-Afrin
15- Afrin Post News Network
16- Afrin Media Center
17- Human Rights Defense Initiative-Syria
18- Human Rights Organization in Al-Jazeera
19- Human Rights Organization in the Euphrates region
20- Hevi Kurdish Association in Belgium