lundi 22 novembre 2010

Syria: a new step in repression?


Tenses are increasing in Syria. Despite the efficiency of its internal security services, president al-assad's Baas regime faces growing dissent from the Kurds. Even if they have been successfully silenced during decades, a series of events recently attracted the attention of the outside world on their fate. There has been the case of the 33 kurds demonstrators who occupied the Syrian embassy in Brussels in 2005. Or the spectacular odyssey of the 123 syrian kurds who landed in Corsica the 22/11/2010 and the controversy following their handling by the french government. There has been as well the month-long protest held in front of Cyprus interior ministry by 150 or so refugees to obtain a status, and a hunger strike in front of the Danish parliament in october by kurds fearing deportation. Their different adventures from court hearings to trials, from detention centres to shelters, the botched legal actions from authorities or the evacuations by anti-riot police come as pale reflections of the repression they endure in their own country.


For during the last five years or so, marginalising kurds even more than they already were seems to have become a matter of national security in the eyes of the Syrian regime. The emergence of an autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq is seen with anxiety by the neighbouring countries, themselves entangled in conflicts with their own Kurdish populations, and Syria feels threatened by a risk of contagion. "Things definitely worsened after 2003", confirms M. al-Youssef, an exiled member of the Syrian Kurd Unity Party (PYKS). "The Kurds and their political parties are now accused of being separatists. It so makes them the prime target of the Arab nationalim at the core of the Baas ideology." The Qamishli massacre in 2004, the countless reports of arbitrary arrests and brutalities perpetrated by the internal security patrols in the Kurdish provinces, are as many examples of an increased repression.
are we witnessing a new repressive campaign aimed at the Kurds, in the same line than the 1962 "special census" or the building of the "arab belt" along the turkish border? (http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/11/24/group-denial ; http://library/usip/org/articles/1012172.1076/1.pdf ) Some new dispositions have been adopted recently. The presidential decree n*49, passed the 10/09/2009, places the al-Hasakah province, where are living most of the Kurds, under military rule. To buy or sell a property, a clearance must now be obtained from the military security directorate and the political activities department.. According to Kurd opposition representatives and human rights activists, the procedure is not applied in the arab provinces, and has been designed exclusively for the Kurdish areas. It not only prevents Kurds to establish themselves in their native province, but also prevents any kind of investment and development. The economic breakdown so engineered pushes the Kurds to leave the province, were they are replaced by arab colonists. They will find themselves isolated in arab-populated parts of Syria, where their identity will be at term progressively dissolved.

But why a new phase in repression, especially now? It looks the Baas regime is now facing a new generation of militants, more radical and more militant than their predecessors. The Syrian Kurd political groups, some of them anyway, are not any more merely asking for the kurds ostracised by the 1962 "special census" to be granted full citizenship. They demand more. At the moment M. al-Youssef was giving the interview, in the last days of december 2009, three members of the PYKS executive committe were arrested alongside a prominent activist. They were caught after a party conference during which they called for autonomy (http://supportkurds.org/news/call-to-action-kurdish-political-activists-detained-in-syria). The PYD recent congress, in october, was held under the theme "forward with autonomy". Messages passed to jailed PYD members, promising not to arrest any party member if it was lowering its demands, and the arrest of central committe member Issa Ibrahim Hesso just after the october congress, are showing the regime's cioncerns with the revendication of "autonomy".

In this context the new developments in Turkey, with the prolongation of the ceasefire and the rumours about opening negociations, are not good news for the syrian government. As long as the war lasts, Syria remains a usefull ally for the turks. Their strategy of encirclement, aiming at isolating the PKK rebels in their mountains, requiers the Syrian cooperation. A press release from an Anatolian news agency (mentioned in Today's Zaman online edition from the 17/06/2010), talking about military operations by the Syrian army in the kurdish provinces, resulting in the death of 11 PKK fighters, has been dismissed as a manipulation. The journalist Newaf Khalil, who spoke to the BBC the 01/07/2010, said the idea was to entice Syria to join the ongoing offensive against the PKK and PJAK, and to assimilate the syrian kurd political activists to the insurgents, so making them legitimate military targets. The promises of amnisties, regularisation of status, made at several opportunities by president al-Assad, appear as attempts to encourage the 1600 syrian kurds fighting in the PKK's army to desert its ranks and so break the organisation's military force.
For, worryingly for Damascus, numerous syrian kurds joined the PKK in the past (Fehman Huseyin, commander of the PKK army, is a Syrian). Would those well trained men and women be tempted to take back the weapons they laid down and resume the fight in Syria rather than in south-eastern Turkey? Nothing indicated anything like this, and representatives from the PYD, who shares with the PKK a common ideology and similar goals, insist on their determination to achieve their objectives by peacefull means. Nonetheless, this supposed "threat" can be used as a pretext for a new step in repression.

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