FOLLOW UP AMUDE EVENTS : „Liberated“ Syrian-Kurdistan? Hardly!

Eva Savelsberg – jungle world Berlin / Kurdwatch

2.7.2013 – Since the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian-Kurdish sister party of the PKK, took control over a majority of the Kurdish regions, the international press likes to refer to these areas as “liberated regions”. Hardly anyone is interested in the fact that assuming control could only be possible through a deal with the Syrian regime – how else to explain the PYD’s takeover of city halls and utility plants, oil fields and border posts, gas stations and cultural centers without a fight? While some wonder whether a similar model to that in Iraqi-Kurdisan will apply to Syrian-Kurdistan, others already fear the breaking apart of the Syrian state. The fact that over the past year and a half the PYD has set up a regime of terror that is mercilessly persecuting, kidnapping, torturing, and killing potential opponents and those who think differently is hardly discussed. Many foreign policy advisors even praise the „stability“ (!), that the PYD is creating in the Kurdish regions.

From now on, all those who are not completely blind must at least refrain from this: When demonstrators in the small Kurdish border city of Amudah protested the kidnapping of three activists by the PYD last Thursday, this was yet too much criticism for the PYD and its militia, the so-called People’s Defense Units. They shot into the crowd, killed at least six people, kidnapped hundreds more, and burned down party offices, as well as youth and women’s centers. Hundreds of activists and politicians are in hiding to escape the PYD’s grasp.

If the Syrian regime had set fire to even one Kurdish party office in the previous forty years – we can be sure that Kurdish party representatives would have held yearly memorial events and complained of a “massacre” of the Kurds, and perhaps even have spoken of a „Holocaust“. When the PYD sets fire to twenty party offices, there is above all one thing – silence. Partially out of fear and political helplessness, partially while many Kurds adhere to the both dangerous as well as nationalistic and deluded opinion that Kurds should not criticize other Kurds. He who is tortured by the „Arab enemy“ is a hero, he who bemoans the same practices among the Kurds is a traitor. 

Instead of also remaining silent from the safety of Europe, it is high time that we support those few brave people who are standing up against the terror of the PYD in Amudah and al-Qamishli, in Afrin and ad-Darbasiyah and risking their lives.