Weekend violence leaves Syrians seeking answers
Soccer riot fueled by anger at emergency law
Cilina Nasser and Rhonda Roumani
Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Conflicting reports emerged Sunday about the causes and
intent of the violence that plagued Syria over the weekend, when at
least 14 Kurdish Syrians died in clashes with security forces,
according to interviews with Syrian analysts. Both sides accused the
other of starting the violence for political ends.
The head of a banned Kurdish party in Syria said the numbers of
Kurds killed in clashes with Syrian police in the northeast over the
weekend could be much higher than announced, as hundreds are still
missing since Friday.
“We do not know if some of those missing are detained or killed, as
many just disappeared and authorities are not allowing people to
check the bodies of the dead in hospitals,” said Abdel-Baqi Youssef,
secretary of Syria’s Kurdish Yekiti Party.
Forty people were also wounded in Qameshli, 700 kilometers northeast
of Damascus, over the weekend when Syrian police at Al-Hassake
Province opened fire on Kurds. Another Kurd died of his wounds on
Sunday, according to Youssef.
Fayez Sarah, a Damascus-based analyst, said Kurds at a soccer match
used the opportunity “to vent their frustrations.”
Over 200,000 Kurds live in Syria, some of whom have been there for
up to 40 years, but they have not been granted citizenship, said
Haitham al-Maleh, head of the Human Rights Association in Syria,
which wrote a report on the Kurds last year.
There are 2 million Kurds in Syria, out a population of some 18
million.
“These people do not receive schools certificates and do not have
work permits in many professions,” Maleh said.
According to Amnesty International, Syrian authorities impose heavy
restrictions on the production and circulation of Kurdish
literature, including books and music.
“Armenians have their own schools. Let the Kurds study their own
language,” Maleh said.
Spontaneous demonstrations are rare in Syria, where the Baath Party
has maintained tight political control for 30 years.
Interior Minister Ali Haj Hammoud went to the Qamishli area to take
charge of efforts to end two days of disturbances during which
buildings were damaged in several towns and up to 40 people wounded.
Syrian state broadcasting reported Saturday evening that the
government had appointed a committee to investigate the reasons
behind the rioting, saying the riots damaged “the stability and
security of the homeland and the citizen” and were the fault of
“some intriguers” who had adopted “exported ideas.”
But the Kurdish official questioned the committee’s credibility,
noting that it was comprised solely of government officials and
officers.
“What we need is an investigation conducted by international human
rights groups,” Youssef said, accusing Syrian authorities of
provoking the unrest, which began during a soccer match on Friday,
to justify keeping the 41-year State of Emergency Law in place.
“Syrian authorities have turned a soccer match into a political
game,” Youssef said
from Hassakeh. “They are trying to create an Arab-Kurdish strife to
justify maintaining the emergency law, especially as Syria came
under pressure to eliminate this law last week.”
However, Sarah blamed some radical Kurdish parties for spreading the
riots, saying they were influenced by developments in Iraq.
“There are extremist Kurds in Syria who are trying to create a
situation in the country that is similar to that in Iraq,” he said,
singling out the Yeketi Party and saying they are backed by
extremists like Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
and Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, both of whom
have aspirations of establishing an independent Kurdish state.
But Murhaf Jouejati, a George Washington University political
science professor specializing in Syrian affairs, said: “They are
not asking for autonomy … The tension is about
them asking authorities to restore their civil rights.”
“My fear is that the state will withdraw from its initial attempt to
solve this problem,” he said from his home outside of Washington.
“The Syrian state was taking up measures to integrate them into
society. This problem comes at the wrong time. It is in the interest
of the Kurdish minority not to foment more trouble.
“One of the reasons why Syria was opposed to the war in Iraq is that
it feared the emergence of a Kurdish autonomous entity in the north
of Iraq, and that this would whet the appetite of the Kurds in Syria
and Turkey to emulate their Iraqi Kurdish counterparts,” said
Jouejati.
Syrian President Bashar Assad recently joined Turkey in warning
against a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
“The Kurdish minority in Syria has been emboldened by the successes
of the Kurds in Iraq,” said Jouejati.
Sarah linked the clashes between Kurds and Syrian authorities to the
US pressure on Syria and the superpower’s threats that it would
impose sanctions on the country.
“They are trying to heat up the pressure on Syria from outside and
inside,” Sarah said, adding that US National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice’s comments Friday, in which she expressed hope that
Lebanon’s upcoming municipal and presidential elections would be
held in an independent atmosphere, were aimed at adding to the
pressure.
According to Youssef, the problem began when crowds of people
supporting the Syrian soccer team, Al-Futtuweh, came to the
predominantly Kurdish town of Qameshli holding pictures of Saddam
Hussein and chanting slogans supporting the ousted Iraqi president.
A Yekiti official said that the Futtuweh fans chanted slogans
against Talabani and Barzani before the beginning of the match,
which aggravated the entire Kurdish crowd and prompted the clashes.
Youssef accused the governor of Hassakeh of ordering the police to
open fire on the Kurds, who make up 12 percent of the 1.5 million
population in the province, charging there were witnesses who heard
him give these orders.
On Saturday, hundreds of Kurds took part in riots, vandalizing shops
and state offices.
The Yekiti official admitted that Kurds went on a rampage,
especially after more people were wounded Saturday during
demonstrations to protest Friday’s killings.
Youssef said that the angry Kurds, most of them young, set fire to
the custom building along Qameshli’s main road.
Syria closed its border crossing from Qamishli to Nusaybin, Turkey,
as of Sunday morning, according to the Turkish television station,
NTV. A few Syrians were unable to cross into Syria, it said.
In Brussels, Belgium, meanwhile, about 50 Kurdish demonstrators
broke into the grounds of the Syrian Embassy on Saturday to protest
the deaths in the soccer riots.
Shouting “Syria, terrorists!” demonstrators climbed into the embassy
garden and smashed windows. Some forced their way into the entry
hall, scattering pamphlets and damaging furniture before being
removed by police.
The demonstrators clashed with Belgian police, who detained most of
them briefly, according to the country’s VRT television station.
About a dozen of those detained remained in custody Sunday morning.
Belgium has a large Kurdish community, most immigrants from Turkey. |
