THE WEST KURDISH PYD & THE HUMAN RIGHTS – ARRESTS & KIDNAPPINGS ?
Accusations against PYD/Asayish by anti-PYD media
23-4-2014 (Van Wilgenburg – Transnational Middle East Observer) The Kurdish Assayish forces –security wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD)– arrested on Monday Salih Jamil, member of the Central Committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS), and other members of the party near the border village of Karbalat while returning home from Iraqi Kurdistan. Speaking to ARA News hours after his release, Salih Jamil said that he was arrested together with 14 other members of his party (KDPS) by the Assayish forces while returning to the Syrian territories on Monday afternoon.
Jamil said that they were held by Assayish forces for 5 hours and then they were forced to return to the Iraqi Kurdistan territory. According to Jamil, only 7 KDPS members were released, while the rest are still kept in the Assayish detention.
“We are at the moment in a center of the Peshmerga forces of Iraqi Kurdistan near the border village of Sihla. We are in a constant contact with the leadership of our party to manage our return to Syria,” Jamil told ARA News.
Notably, members of the PYD-led Assayish forced a number of KDPS members to return to Iraqi Kurdistan on the 14th of this April after detaining them for hours.
Kurdish Journalists Suppressed
In a relevant context, a PYD-linked group which called itself “the institution of the YPG martyrs’ families” reportedly kidnapped on Friday two journalists in Qamishli city and expelled them after one day of detention to the Iraqi Kurdistan territory. The group accused Peshwa Behlewi (correspondent of Kurdish Rudaw TV) and Rodi Ibrahim (correspondent of Syrian Orient News TV) of working for anti-Kurds media outlets, describing them as “traitors”.
“Nobody has the right to kidnap or banish journalists in this humiliating way,” argued Jiwan Ferso, a Syrian Kurdish journalist. “We have to legally hold the perpetrators responsible.”
Speaking to ARA News, Chief Editor of Jisr Newspaper, Bahzad Haj Hamo, said: “This is not the first time that the PYD-linked forces violate people’s right to freedom of speech; several incidents of detention and humiliation against journalists took place in the Kurdish areas over the last few months.”
“The practices of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed forces unfortunately remind us of the suppression of the Baath Party against our people,” Hamo said.
According to Salar Ose, a Syrian journalist, the lack of professional media outlets in Syria’s Kurdish areas is resorted to the “brutality of forces in control and the pressures political parties practice against journalists’ work”.
“Kidnapping and exiling Peshwa Behlewi and Rodi Ibrahim by the Assayish forces reflect the deep-rooted rifts within the Kurdish community in Syria. We strongly condemn such practices against journalists under any conditions,” said Ose.
Reporting by: Saman Hassan
Source: ARA News
http://www.aranews.org/en/in-depth/1290-kurds-humiliated-by-kurds-in-syria.html
Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan– The Political Bureau of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) condemned in a statement released on Sunday what it called “the irresponsible practices” of the officials of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) −who lead the self-rule administration announced last year in areas where Kurds constitute a majority in north and northeastern Syria.
The statement (of which ARA News received a copy) called on the PYD officials “not to drive the Kurdish people in Syria into unnecessary conflicts and to seriously review their wrong policies”.
“We call on the PYD officials to stop their violent actions which aim at excluding other Kurdish political forces and to adopt principles of dialogue instead,” the statement read.
The statement also accused the PYD officials of trying to prevent the efforts of the KDPS to hold its foundational conference (which was held in Iraqi Kurdistan at the beginning of this April) by preventing their party members to cross into Syria through the Semalka border crossing which is under the control of security forces (Assayish) of the PYD “de facto authorities”.
“The PYD de facto authorities prevented the delegation of our party (KDPS) to return home after ending the foundational conference by detaining them and forcing some of them to return to Iraqi Kurdistan again,” the statement said, adding that the PYD authorities “systematically worked to offend the KDPS through its media outlet, and accused its members of betraying the Kurdish people in Syria.”
The statement also referred to “death threats” which the KDPS leaders received from PYD-linked activists.
“The PYD’s behaviours and practices neither serve the rights of the Kurdish people in Syria nor contribute to their aspirations. Moreover, these practices harm the Syrian national issues and undermine the efforts aimed at bringing all the national forces to work together,” the KDPS leadership argued.
Speaking to ARA News, Abdurrahman Abo, member of the Central Committee of the KDPS and a former detainee at center of the PYD-led Assayish forces, said: “The PYD policies should have at least served the national interests of the Syrian people, and in particular the Kurdish people, by forming a strong front in the face of the Syrian bloody regime and by working jointly with other forces in order to have a minimum amount of losses in this period which the country is going through.”
“However, the PYD practices on the ground, and especially their aggressions against our party members, are far away from the values which the Kurdish national struggle has been known for,” Abo argued.
Abo concluded: “We urge the PYD’s de facto authorities to comply with the culture of accepting the other and to make efforts to get into dialogues with other political forces for the sake of the Kurdish and Syrian national interests.”
Reporting by: Azad Jemkari
Source: ARA News http://www.aranews.org/en/in-depth/1285-pyd-under-fire.html