From al-Hasakah to the French shores, the Syrian Kurds

The 123 Syrian Kurds who came to land on the corsican coasts the 22/01/2010 attracted attention on their people's fate. Their adventures from court hearings to shelters and associations, the botched legal actions by the authorities trying to confine them in detention centres, appear pale reflections of the state repression they face in their own country.
Organisations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch talk talk about arbitrary arrests, people remained in custody without trial, police violence, which look to increase in the last year. The 29, Amnesty started a campaign to obtain the liberation of four kurd activists detained since the end of december, expressing its fears of tortures and mistreatments in the hands of the security forces.

Syrian Kurds are, accordingly to Syria's official statistics, 1,5 million (9% of the total population). "These numbers are wrong", says Mr. Youssef, member of the Syrian Kurd Union Party (PYKS - forbidden), living in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan. A census carried by Syrian intelligence agencies in 2007, with its results kept secret, would be showing the actual figure is around 3 million. "Damascus government wants to marginalise the kurds at any costs. To arbitrarily reduce the number of kurds, it is to deny them their actual importance inside Syria."
In 1962 is organised a "special census" in al-Hasaka province, in the north-east, where are living most of the Syrian Kurds. The official purpose is to find the Turkish Kurds who came to establish themselves illegally in Syria. A "surprise census", one would say, carried in just one day, without providing the targeted population with adequate information. "In fact it was to withdraw their syrian nationality to a significant number of people, to strengthen the grip of the state on a strategic province. A ratio was even given: 28% of the al-Hasakah kurds had to loose their Syrian nationality."
This census divided the Kurds into three categories: the syrian kurds, the foreign ("ajanib") kurds, and the "concealed" ("maktumin") kurds. 120000 kurds, or 20% of the syrian kurds at the time, so became foreigners in their own country. With sometimes amazing results: "It did happen to have a person retaining his citizenship while his brother was becoming a foreigner."
To be a foreign kurd, holder of an orange identity card with the mention "al-Hasakah", means losing the right to travel freely, the right to own a house, and marriage is not recognised by syrian institution. This goes with discrimination at work and restriction of education. The fate of the "concealed" kurds is even worse. Their white residency card is used for identification purpose only and deprives them of any status.
With time, the problem amplifies: the children of the foreign kurds become "concealed", excluding from society an increasing number of kurds. "It is like a disease", says Mr. Youssef, "It is transmitted from generation to generation."
This special census aimed at the kurds was followed by the building of an "arab belt", 375 km long and 15 km wide along the Turkish border, from which the kurds were evicted and replaced by arab settlers. Arab villages so created were given priorities in terms of development, creating so growing inequalities between kurds and arab colonists.

"Tenses increased, and things worsened after 2003", explains Mr. Youssef. "The Kurdistan enclave in Northern Iraq, supported by the americans, excited the Syrian Baas ruling party propaganda, in power since 1963: the kurds were separatists, aiming at breaking national unity. It made us designed targets for the arab nationalism at the heart of the Baas ideology."
Some new dispositions are then taken. The last in date is presidential decree n*49, adopted the 10/09/2009. Pretexting the danger of a military confrontation with Israel (600km away), it places the al-Hasakah province under martial law. The decree means that to buy or sell a property, a clearance must be obtained from the military security agency and the political activities department. This procedure prevents the kurds to establish themselves in their native place, and have them leaving the province. In emptying the border zones from its kurd population, they are cut from the kurds from neighbouring countries, and isolated into Syria. An effective method to restrict the diffusion of kurdish identity...
"It allows as well to target people involved with a kurd political party, anyway forbidden.", adds Mr. Youssef. There is a political opposition, but it is very divided and submitted to heavy pressure from security forces. Its members are routinely harassed, sent in front of military courts, or even kept in custody waiting for a trial for several years.
The exactions, arbitrary arrests, tortures, are not perpetrated by regular police but by the State Security or the military security agency, which have an almost total control on the al-Hasakah province.

Tenses grew to finally erupt in Qamishly ithe 12/03/2004. That day, brawls between football supporters, kurds and arabs, degenerate into pitched battles against the security forces. "Five persons were killed the first day", says Mr. Youssef. "In the three following days, there was an estimated 6000 arrests and 150 wounded. 30 more persons died. Some in fact were tortured to death."
Brutalities are as well commonplace during the compulsory two-and-an-half long national service. Since 2004, 36 kurd recruits died, including 16 in 2009 alone. The "accidents", "suicides" advanced as explanations by the authorities are rejected by the victims' families as well as by Mr. Youssef. "It was barracks violences", he says. "They were not planned, but are the result of a racist climate created by the Baas regime. The discrimination policy encourages these violences. And no actual inquiry has never been carried about these deaths."

In these conditions, the deportation in early december of Syrian Kurds from germany raises fear to have them persecuted once back in Syria. Mr. Youssef points of the surrealistic aspect of the situation. "On what ground have they been sent back to Syria? Accordingly to the Syrian state itself, they are not Syrian nationals." Will it happen the same to the Kurds who landed in Corsica two weeks ago? The initial measures of the French government, placing them in detention centres against regulations, shows the authorities are fearing to see other loads of disenfranchised kurd coming on their shores. Even if the 123 kurds have now reasonable chances to be accepted as refugees, those who would like to imitate them may find a more difficult situation: the immigration minister, Besson, talks about the necessity to modify the present law. Under new dispositions, any clandestine immigrant who would be expelled would be forbidden to apply in any country of the European Union during five long years.