Hundreds of Thousands of Syrian Kurds Live in Fear of Islamist Extremist Violence – UN
Syrian Kurdish refugees cross the border into Turkey after fleeing fighting around the city of Kobani in north-east
Syria. Photo: UNHCR/I. Prickett
23 September 2014 – With 138,000 Syrians having already fled to Turkey from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL), United Nations officials today voiced grave concern for hundreds of thousands more who remained, living in fear
of the sort of persecution perpetrated by ISIL against religious and ethnic minorities elsewhere.
The situation of the mainly Kurdish residents of north-western Syria worsened dramatically over the past week with a new
ISIL onslaught which saw the extremist Islamic group reportedly capture 105 villages and threaten Kobani (also known as
Ayn al-Arab), the main town in the region.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has received very alarming reports of deliberate killing of civilians, including women and children, the abduction of
hundreds of Kurds by ISIL, and widespread looting and destruction of infrastructure and private property, spokesperson
Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
On Saturday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded an immediate end to the violence.
As of 2006, the population of Kobani was some 150,000 and that of the region around half a million. A further hundred
villages have reportedly been abandoned by fearful inhabitants and the population movement could be much larger than so
far, he added.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that majority of new arrivals are women, children and the elderly who arrived exhausted, having walked
several kilometres to safety on a dusty, rough road with their luggage. Some elderly and disabled were carried to safety
by relatives, their wheel chairs hopelessly unsuited to the rough terrain.
UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming said her agency was helping Turkey cope with the influx, donating large trucks to be used as mobile registration centres,
complete with computers, biometric and photographic equipment.
The agency has already provided tens of thousands of relief items - blankets, sleeping mats, jerry cans and plastic
sheets – to help in the response coordinated by the Government of Turkey.
More aid was on the way, with the first in a series of airlifts bringing aid for up to 200,000 people due to arrive in
Adana airport, Turkey, tomorrow from Amman, Jordan. Another three flights from Amman and Copenhagen are expected to
follow later in the week.
Residents of Kobani have lived in difficult humanitarian conditions since the town and surrounding villages first came
under siege by ISIL forces in 2013, with shortages of food, fuel and potable water.
Ms. Fleming noted that the number of refugees flooding into Turkey over the past few days was comparable to the total
that the whole of Europe has taken during the entire three years of conflict.
OHCHR is also closely following the trial of Syrian human rights defender Mazen Darwish who, along with two colleagues,
has been charged with “promoting terrorist acts” as prescribed under article 8 of Syria’s broad and ill-defined
anti-terrorism law.
Mr. Darwish, Hani Al-Zitani and Hussein Ghareer worked with the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression and
had been detained in February 2012 in Damascus by Syrian Air Force Intelligence officials during a raid on their office.
The men have reportedly been ill-treated and tortured in detention, but those allegations have not been investigated,
Mr. Colville said. OHCHR is calling on the Syrian Government to release all those detained for peacefully exercising
their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association, including human rights defenders, journalists and
political opponents who had been detained under the anti-terrorism law, he added.
ENDS