1st axis: Evidence of Turkey's crimes must be filed, sent to International Criminal Court

The second human rights forum on human rights crimes in occupied Afrin continues its work to shed light on the crimes committed by the Turkish occupation since March 2018, and after an intervention by the Syrian journalist and dissident Ghassan Ibrahim and hearing the testimony of 3 witnesses from occupied Afrin, the activities of the forum continued to discuss the first axis.

The first axis, which lasted for 30 minutes, was managed by Dr. Azad Diwani, who holds a PhD in Peace Studies - Resolution of Armed Conflict - London, on the characteristics of the crimes committed by the Turkish occupation army and mercenary groups supported by Turkey.

At the beginning of the axis, Dr. Azad Diwani talked about the situation of Afrin city prior to the occupation and emphasized: "Before the occupation, Afrin region was home to nearly 90% of Afrin's original inhabitants, and in 2011, it began to receive hundreds of thousands of displaced people."

We can divide the occupying powers that have an Islamic background into two parts, the first of which is the Turkish army which includes special forces and a number of gray wolves, and the other part is the jihadi factions such as al-Hamzat and Ahrar al-Sham, and through the videos that appear on television screens, we can notice that some of them are not jihadists but Islamic groups, so Turkey is trying to cover up these groups."

As for what resulted from the ethnic cleansing that Turkey pursued in Afrin and Serêkaniyê, Azad Diwani pointed out: "The policy of ethnic cleansing is still continuing, as most Afrin people now live in al-Shahba camps, and some of them have fled to European countries, and this is what the demographic change has left behind."

He added: "The local council in Afrin, supported by Turkey, changed the official language of the people, closed language education centers, converted them into religious centers and replaced the Kurds with other nationalities, and the goal of this issue is to separate and divide Kurdistan lands internally, thus keeping the Kurdish issue away from being a global issue."

We can consider the crimes that occur in Afrin as war crimes, and they aim at ethnic cleansing as well, and they can be called massacres according to United Nations law.

After the completion of Dr. Azad Diwani's lecture, the attendees and participants' online interventions began, and opinions and suggestions were given.

Most of the discussions and interventions took place via Zoom application by personalities from Arab and European countries, such as Egypt, Iraq and some European countries, and the interventions emphasized that the idea of ​​resolving the Kurdish issue should be raised all over the world, taking witnesses to crimes in Afrin to the White House, and collecting evidence about crimes to be documented in the reports of the World United Nations Organization, in addition to putting pressure on the Turkish economy, expelling the Turkish government from NATO, and returning the Turks in Afrin and the occupied areas to the place they came from.

The discussions also revolved around the formation of a body composed of jurists, lawyers and competent people, monitoring crimes, preparing a file and sending it to the International Criminal Court, and demanding that the mercenaries of the Turkish occupation army be held accountable and brought to the international criminal trial to be punished, and this matter needs tremendous efforts, organizing campaigns by organizations, jurists and researchers to achieve this.

Then a briefing was given by the lawyer, legal advisor, and general director of the Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights - Egypt, Ayman Aqil, who spoke about the crimes committed by the Turkish occupation in Afrin, saying: "The crimes committed by the Turkish occupation are a violation of international law and a violation of the Hague Convention 1945 to protect cultural property in the event of armed conflict, and in violation of the laws of the Security Council."

Stressing that "human rights crimes that violate all international and global laws are enough for Erdogan and Turkey to be tried."

D.H

ANHA