Politics

Syrian Kurds welcome initiative to find missing persons in Syria

The KNC said that there are many Kurdish missing persons in Syria, including those who were kidnapped by the Syrian regime.

Kurdistan 24 2023/07/09 21:26

A meeting of the Kurdish National Council (KNC) in Syria (Photo: Kurdistan 24)

Syria Kurdish National Council in Syria Syrian regime PYD SDF

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdish National Council in Syria in a statement on Sunday welcomed last month’s UN resolution to establish the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria.

The resolution was condemned by the Syrian government, which underlined that Syria “has processed all claims on a national basis and has conducted independent investigations based on Syrian law.”

The KNC in the statement said that his new institution will give hope to the families of the missing. The KNC stressed the importance of finding those who are in the hands of the Syrian government and those who have been abducted by other factions as well.

The KNC said that there are many missing Kurdish persons in Syria, including those who were kidnapped by the Syrian regime and the local authorities led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Moreover, the KNC thanked all the countries that stood by the side of the Syrian people and described these decisions of the international community as positive steps in the right direction to alleviate the sufferings of Syrians and find a solution to the country’s crisis.

According to a report of the Netherlands-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) from 2020, 100,000 persons have gone missing in Syria since the start of the 2011 uprising.

“While the vast majority are reported to have been forcibly disappeared with involvement of the government, in northeast Syria, a tumultuous set of events and changing political and military actors have been responsible for missing persons,” the report said.

The report said that the missing people include ethnic groups from different backgrounds, including Arabs, Kurds and Assyrians.

The report also said that there was evidence of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) having reportedly disappeared individuals including Kurdish activists and dissidents opposing PYD rule, families with perceived ties to ISIS or FSA fighters, and civilians.

The KNC has accused the PYD-led authorities of kidnapping their supporters in the past, and submitted a list of 10 missing supporters to the SDF in Dec. 2020 as part of the intra-Kurdish unity talks that eventually failed.

“While there is no exact number of disappearances, the number is much lower than those disappeared by the Syrian government and ISIS,” the ICMP report noted.

The report also said ISIS similarly captured and disappeared Kurdish civilians and others affiliated with the PYD and People’s Protection Units (YPG) when the terror group took control over hundreds of Kurdish villages and towns in and around Kobani in 2014. Until now, the majority of the Kurds kidnapped by ISIS are still missing.

ISIS also assassinated or disappeared members of Arab tribes in Deir ez-Zor, the most notable massacre being that of the Shuatait tribe in 2014.

According to SDF statistics from 2020, a total of 3,286 persons have disappeared in predominantly Kurdish areas of Syria (Rojava) since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in early 2011.

Hundreds of Kurds were also detained or kidnapped by Turkish-backed factions in the Kurdish-majority region of Afrin that Turkey occupied in 2018.