QAMISHLI, Syria, 21 March 2004 — Syrian authorities have released around 600 Syrian Kurds arrested over a week of deadly unrest that began on March 12, the head a banned Kurdish party said yesterday. “We have been informed of the liberation of 600 people arrested last Saturday in Dumar, west of Damascus, during clashes with the police,” said Abdul Aziz Dawd, secretary-general of the banned Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party. Dawd added that around 1,500 other Kurds are still being detained in the northeastern province of Hassake and Alepp on the northwest. The trouble broke out at a football match in Qamishli, 600 kilometers northeast of Damascus on the Turkish border, when Arab tribesmen taunted Kurds with slogans against Iraqi Kurdish leaders and brandished portraits of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Interior Minister Ali Hammud said a total of 25 people had been killed in the unrest, but a KDPP official, Abdel Hamid Darwish, put the figure at 40. And a statement by Muhammad Sawan, who heads the Kurdish Gathering for Democracy and Unity, was the first public indication that the Kurdish unrest had spread to the outskirts of the Syrian capital. The release was not confirmed by the Syrian government, which has not given any figure for the number of people detained since riots among members of the Kurdish minority and police and Arabs began on March 12. The riots have shocked Syria, a tightly controlled country where spontaneous protests are rare, and led to calls for national unity from state-run media and religious leaders. This week, Kurds battled Arab policemen in Syria’s second biggest city, Aleppo, 320 kilometers north of Damascus, and the nearby town of Afreen. It is not known how many Kurds were detained. On March 14, the head of the Kurdish Yakiti Party, Abdel Baki Youssef, told The Associated Press by telephone from Qamishli that 250 Kurds had been arrested. Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush is expected to soon slap tough economic sanctions on Syria, going beyond the minimum requirements of a bill approved by Congress last year, according to congressional sources in Washington. The penalties, which could be announced next week, would mark a reversal for an administration that initially opposed the sanctions legislation. The administration later agreed to support the bill only after it was revised to give the president the power to waive all penalties. Congressional sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they have been told the administration plans to choose three sanctions. One would bar Syrian planes from flying over or landing in the United States. Another would prohibit new investments by US oil companies in Syria.
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