The head of the Human Rights Organization in Afrin, Ibrahim Sheikho, revealed, during a report he presented at the second human rights forum on human rights violations in Afrin, the violations and crimes committed by Turkey and its mercenaries in Afrin canton over three years of occupation.
The activities of the second human rights forum on human rights violations in occupied Afrin, which started this morning, continue to highlight the crimes committed by the Turkish occupation since March 2018.
After the speech of the co-chair of the Executive Council in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Abdul Hamid al-Mahbash, the head of the Human Rights Organization in Afrin, Ibrahim Sheikho, revealed the violations that Turkey and its mercenaries had committed during 3 years.
The report of the head of the Human Rights Organization in Afrin stated:
On January 20, 2018, the Turkish occupation army and its affiliated Syrian jihadist groups launched a military operation to occupy Afrin canton, using all kinds of heavy and modern weapons, with the support of artillery bombardment and warplanes with all brutality, leaving a huge amount of sabotage and destruction to the infrastructure and vital civilian facilities, The attack caused thousands of civilian casualties, either dead or wounded, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents of these areas, and dozens of massacres characterized by ethnic cleansing, committing flagrant violations of all international principles and conventions, under various pretexts to justify the occupation of Afrin canton, including: protecting Turkish national security and establishing safe regions and resettlement of Syrian refugees and displaced persons, knowing that Afrin had an administrative and societal system before its occupation and enjoyed relative stability in terms of security and economics, which was lacking in most other Syrian regions and cities, in addition to housing tens of thousands of displaced people from other Syrian regions.
In what follows, we will review an aspect of the violations committed against civilians in Afrin canton, during three years of occupation, a part of which has been documented, and the bulk is still hidden, as a result of the policy of the Turkish state and the jihadist groups affiliated with it through the media blackout and concealment of evidence, and the absence of capable independent international committees on access to all victims, which are as follows:
Statistics for 2018:
The occupation settled more than 400 settlers in Afrin
The Turkish state launched the military operation at the first hours of dawn on January 20, 2018, using more than 72 warplanes and artillery support, targeting all vital military, civil and vital facilities, and invaded in cooperation with the Syrian jihadist factions, after a brave resistance by the Syrian Democratic Forces. More than 58 days. The Turkish army’s occupation of Afrin caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of its residents, approximately 80%, to the areas of al-Shahba, the city of Aleppo, the town of Tal Rifaat, and the al-Shahba camp, which was later established by the Autonomous Administration, and during three years of occupation, nearly 400,000 settlers were resettled throughout The villages and districts of Afrin, who were brought from the conflict zones in Syria, especially the southern countryside of Idlib, the southern and western countryside of Aleppo, and the displaced from the Ghouta region.
The number of victims as a result of this operation reached (498) civilians, who lost their lives as a result of the Turkish bombing and the jihadist factions affiliated with it, including (82) victims who died under torture and more than (696) wounded as a result of the bombing were documented, of whom about (303) children were wounded and (213) of women were injured.
64 schools were destroyed due to the military operation, and according to the Education Authority’s statistics in Afrin canton, the number of students registered with it before the military operation was 50,855 students, and currently there are only 13,000 students in al-Shahba areas. With the Turkish state closing all educational centers, including Afrin University, canceling the curricula that were taught in the Kurdish mother tongue and imposing Turkish and Arabic languages on schools, in addition to imposing the teaching of Islamic law on the rest of the population and from all minorities.
During 2018, the Turkish state and the extremist Syrian armed factions carried out systematic killings and kidnappings, and the number of kidnapped persons reached 943, of whom 76 were killed under torture or executed without any trials, and the charges against them are dealing with the Autonomous Administration. And under the supervision of the Turkish forces and their military intelligence MIT, through direct investigation and torture operations.
Dozens of vital sites and health, educational and service facilities were targeted, as Afrin Hospital was bombed 3 times, and ambulances belonging to the Kurdish Red Crescent were targeted while transporting the wounded, and a water purification station was targeted in the village of Matina, affiliated to Shara district, and the dam of the village of Maidanki was targeted during the military operation to cut off the water on the population and using it as a weapon of war to force civilians to flee.
Statistics for 2019:
The number of kidnappings and ransom demands in 2019 reached more than 6,000 cases in Afrin canton, of which 500 cases were demanded to pay ransom money from their relatives, 330 people whose fate is unknown, and 700 people were documented subjected to torture, in addition to kidnappings that included young children and filming scenes of their torture. And sending it to their families in order to blackmail them to pay the ransom, which sometimes amounted to more than 100 thousand US dollars, and the number of murders at the hands of the factions reached 54 who died under torture in detention centers and 41 died as a result of the bombing of the Turkish state and jihadist factions, and the killing of 2 journalists was documented. The number of wounded reached 670 as a result of bombing operations by the jihadist factions and the Turkish army, and 1,730 were wounded, as a result of explosions in residential areas and mines.
On December 2, 2019, the city of Tal Rifaat, 35 km north of Aleppo, was subjected to direct artillery shelling by the Turkish state and armed factions, and the bombing targeted the gatherings of displaced people from Afrin directly, resulting in the loss of 8 children and 2 adults, in addition to wounding and injuring 9 other children and 8 adults in this massacre.
The Afrin region witnessed widespread violations against women, including kidnappings, killings, rape and torture, a policy followed by jihadist factions and Turkish forces to abuse civilians and force them to flee, as the number of documented killings between 2018 and 2019 of women reached 40 women, 128 wounded, and 60 cases of rape were recorded, most of them against minors, as 5 of them committed suicide and kidnapped 270 others, in addition to recording cases of forced marriage under threat and extortion and the high rate of underage marriage among women to avoid their relatives marrying members of armed groups.
Statistics for 2020:
The number of victims reached: 58 who lost their lives, including 9 women, and the number of kidnappings reached 987 people, and the number of bombings reached 39 in civilian-populated areas, resulting in the injury and loss of 170 people, the number of documented cases of kidnapping women reached 35 cases during the year 2020, and it was recorded. 67 cases of rape against women in Afrin, including minors, who are not disclosed due to social restrictions, and 5 cases of forced marriage by jihadist factions against minors from Afrin canton have been documented. Sexual violence was not only against women, as cases of rape of men and adolescents were documented in the prisons of the factions under the supervision and knowledge of the Turkish army.
Violations against minorities and historical monuments
Minorities have been subjected to widespread violations and cultural and religious change processes, especially the Alawite and Yazidi sects, and the number of Yazidi villages is 23 villages, which were inhabited by about 25,000 thousand people before the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, and with the repeated attacks of jihadist factions throughout the years of the Syrian conflict, a number of them emigrated, heading towards European countries, and with the entry of the Turkish occupation forces and the extremist Syrian factions into Afrin, most of them fled from these villages, and a few of them did not leave their villages, and most of them were elderly, and the remaining numbers did not exceed 7,000 people, the groups and factions committed crimes and violations amounting to crimes against humanity The policy of intimidation and imposing the Islamic religion on them and forcing them to perform the Islamic rituals of prayer and fasting and subjecting them to Islamic courses, and on the other hand they destroyed the cultural and religious heritage of this sect in an attempt to exterminate them, and turned their religious shrines into animal pens and destroyed their historical shrines and shrines and exhumed them in search of antiquities .
Nothing was spared in Afrin canton of the oppression of the jihadist factions and the Turkish army, everything was permissible, as the number of forest and olive trees that were cut down for firewood trade reached more than 300,000 thousand trees, including 300 rare perennial olive trees and 15,000 thousand oak trees, and more than 11,000 thousand forest trees, the equivalent of 2,180 dunums, and the burning of more than 10,000 hectares of agricultural land out of 33,000 hectares of agricultural land.
The historical and cultural monuments in Afrin witnessed major destruction and looting, according to the statistics of the Antiquities Authority in Afrin. More than 28 archaeological sites and mounds were destroyed and the antiquities in them were stolen and sold in Turkish markets in an organized process to obliterate the historical identity of Afrin canton, and more than 15 were destroyed. A religious shrine for religious and sectarian minorities, and some of them were converted into Islamic mosques under the auspices of Turkish relief and religious institutions, and some of them were transformed into animal pens after the completion of their exhumation, and the names of most of the streets, squares, public and historical places in Afrin canton were changed with the names of Turkish and Islamic personalities, especially those who committed crimes against the people Kurdish.
