Kurdish nationalism. Damascus. the population. a passport. country's constitution. In the first of two articles on reports on recent events in Syria and Iraq. Next month she looks at the situation of Kurds in Turkey and the political strategies of on mid-March mass protests swept
Kurdish towns and districts of Syria
including the Kurdish quarter of
Between I and 2 million Kurds live in Syria, amounting to approximately 12% of
The whole population of hospitals). Syria has lived under emergency law for 30 years, during which time traditionally Kurdish areas have been subjected to Arabisation policies. 200,000 of the Syrian Kurds are stateless, as the Syrian authorities refuse to give them citizenship, unable to vote, buy property, find employment or get
The government has systematically suppressed peaceful efforts for reform, and jailed, tortured, exiled and killed Kurdish activists. Kurds in Syria are not allowed to response to it? participate normally in political life, nor do they have minority protection under the
The protests followed attacks on 12 March by Baathists on Kurdish football supporters at a stadium in Qamishlo, a town near the border with Turkey, in which several people including 3 children were killed. Syrian police fired randomly at the crowds during the funeral procession, and within two or three days the death toll had probably reached 150, as the demonstrations and street fighting continued
Several people were shot dead by the police at a Halabja memorial meeting in Aleppo (the anniversary being March 16).
Hundreds of people were wounded and some of these have died since because the few doctors treating them lacked adequate equipment and supplies (evidently many people were not taken to hospitals, and there were reports of wounded people being killed by security forces personnel in people were arrested, including erhaps as many as four thousand
intellectuals, political activists, and in some areas all adult men. Some have now been released. Kurdish towns and districts are under army occupation, and for some days there was a news blackout, with blocking of websites that had access to information from within Syria.
What sparked the initial incident and the
Kurdish sources say that the supporters of the opposing team, who came from a distant town, had weapons on them but were not searched when they entered the stadium, in other words the police colluded with a planned attack.
The reaction across the country, unprecedented for the Syrian Kurds, was the result of a combination of frustration at years of ill-treatment, and inspiration fron the new freedoms that the Southern Kurd in Northern Iraq are felt to have gaine since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Solidarity demonstrations across Kurdistan
Large solidarity demonstrations too place in Arbil and Sulimaniya, the main citie in South Kurdistan, with slogans assertin the unity of Kurdistan and comparin Qamishlo with Halabja.
Similar demonstrations were reporte from Mahabad in Iran. (There is widesprea unrest for similar reasons in Irani Kurdistan and also because there is partic pation in the general efforts to force co cessions from the regime in Tehran.)
There were also similar smallish demo strations in Turkish Kurdistan, especially towns down towards Syria.
These demonstrations with the slog "Kurdistan yek parcheye - Qamish Helebceye (Kurdistan is one country Qamishli is another Halabja)" show tha spite of all the efforts to blot it out there i significant degree of shared national feeir amongst Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan
But of course the path towards a polit solution to the Kurdish national questior not easy. Iran, Syria and Turkey, and t occupying powers of Iraq, the US Britain, are all agreed on one thing at less adamant opposition to any genuine nato rights and independence for the Kurds
page 20 of the scan
20 socialst re ••. ance April 2004