Documented crimes, live testimony in 2nd session of Forum on Ethnic Genocide

The Forum on Ethnic Genocide and Demographic Change in Northern and Eastern Syria, held in the town of Rumailan, continues its work according to the program specified by the preparatory committee.

The second session of the Forum was entitled "Defining and Evaluating Violations Committed in the Context of the Genocide and Demographic Change from Legal Point of View." The session was managed by Zozan Ibrahim, a professor in the Civil Law and the co-chair of the Work Affairs Body in al-Jazeera region previously. 

In the first topic of the session, the report prepared by the Human Rights Organization in the al-Jazeera region was read by Avin Zikr Allah Jumaah, the Organization's executive director, and a human rights activist.

The report included the genocide committed by the Turkish occupation and mercenary gangs against the people of northern and eastern Syria.

The report included documenting the cases of killing civilians in Afrin; 1,213 civilians, including 54 who were killed under torture, in addition to the killing of 281 civilians in Serêkaniyê, and 19 civilians killed by gendarmerie at the border.

The report also included cases of physical harm to civilians, torture, ill-treatment, enforced disappearance and inflicting damage to properties, targeting medical personnel and journalists, looting of properties, cutting down trees, mutilating bodies and other violations.

This was followed by a lecture given by the Vice Presidency of the Executive Council of Afrin, Israfeel Mostafa, who spoke in his lecture on the crimes of ethnic cleansing practiced by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries in Afrin. Mostafa pointed out that Afrin had suffered from attacks and efforts to ethnic cleansing from 2013 until its occupation in 2018.

In addition to the killings and displacement cases that Mostafa mentioned in his report, he also mentioned kidnappings and ransom requests, torture in prisons and detention centers, as well as incidents of booby-trapping and bombings, the destruction of schools, religious sites and homes, theft, looting, stealing and trading of antiquities, and the change of archaeological monuments.

He pointed to targeting women in particular, in addition to that the Afrin women were forced to wear the veil and were forbidden from leaving the house after they were the symbol of liberation and the leader in building a democratic society in Afrin and northeast Syria, where more than 50 women were killed and 210 women were injured, in addition to 60 cases of rape, and 3 cases of suicide as a result of coercion and the poor psychological conditions they were subjected to.

Israfeel called on the UN Security Council and all humanitarian and human rights organizations to work to remove the Turkish occupation and its armed factions from Afrin and all other regions of northern and eastern Syria, ensure the safe and dignified return of all displaced persons to their homes, return all the stolen goods from archaeological artifacts and compensate those affected, and prosecute all related figures of the leaders and members of the Turkish occupation and its armed factions with war crimes and crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court.

The second lecture was given by Hamdan Hassen al-Abed, the Deputy Joint Presidency of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, in which he touched on a number of crimes of ethnic cleansing in the regions of northern and eastern Syria, especially in the Girê Spî / Tal Abyad region, including the Turkish attack on Ain Issa camp, and housing ISIS families in the villages of the rural areas of Tel Abyad, Kor Mazeh, Ain al-Arous, eastern Tel Abyad and Silok.

Al-Abed confirmed that Girê Spî was witnessing a state of insecurity and lack of safety as Tel Abyad and its countryside witnessed more than seven explosions, the practice of enforced disappearance "kidnapping and ransom", and the seizure and looting of private properties of citizens; cars, sheep, vehicles, motorcycles, home furniture and shop goods.

Al-Abd called on the United Nations, relevant international organizations, the Security Council, human rights organizations, civil society, and UNICEF to move the case and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes, especially those related to the crime of forced displacement with the aim of demographic change, as it amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and this required punishing the perpetrators, hoping that the displaced would return to their homes in safety, with international guarantees.

The last lecture in the second session was for Abed al-Razzaq Aryani, a resident of the Serêkaniyê city, entitled "Serêkaniyê and Ras al-Ain Cities Before the Turkish Occupation and After It."

The lectures included live testimonies about what the conditions of Serêkaniyê city used to be and what they had been after the Turkish occupation.

Aryani said, "We used to live in the full sense of the word, practicing our institutional work in all honesty and safety. We used to participate in planting the lands, and the Autonomous Administration used to be an answer to all the policies of racism and societal ignorance practiced during hundreds of years."

He added, "By bombing Serêkaniyê and its environs, panic and fear of death began. Serêkaniyê was emptied of its residents, children were homeless and lost, and the surrounding villages were emptied.”

Fear, hunger, homelessness and killing according to the sect prevailed in Serêkaniyê and its villages, and Serêkaniyê became a ghost town, where destruction and vandalism, not to mention the looting, kidnapping of persons and demanding ransom in exchange for their liberation and arbitrary arrests.

Aryani said at the end of his lecture that Turkey's goal of the occupation was the demographic change and extermination to house thousands of mercenaries’ families, and expel its indigenous population. According to Erdogan's statements, since the beginning of the operation of Terrorism Spring, 371 refugees were brought to northeastern Syria, and he began to change the names of places such as the hospitals, court and other facilities in addition to raising the Turkish flag on them.

During the interventions, a number of the people of the occupied territories in Serêkaniyê and Girê Spî spoke, and they enriched the session's axes with live testimonies about the practices of the occupation army and its mercenaries. They also affirmed that mercenary groups were responsible, as much as the Turkish occupation army, for genocide and ethic genocide crimes against the people.

The work of the Forum continues with the third and final session, as the Forum is scheduled to conclude its work by holding a press conference and reading the closing statement.

D.H