Three Kurds Are Killed In Syria
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Syria’s Kurdish population may be facing a new crackdown, with news of the latest killing of Kurds in the northeastern border town of Qamishli. On March 20, three Kurds celebrating the new year holiday of Nowruz were killed by the Syrian intelligence service.
Three men were killed in Qamishli, the site of riots and clashes between Kurds and the intelligence service, or Mukhabarat, in 2004.
The latest incident has drawn criticism both from Human Rights Watch and the Syrian Reform Party, a group largely made up of exiles based in America and Europe.
A research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Tony Badran, said yesterday, “Ever since the American intervention in Iraq, the Kurds have become more demanding of their basic rights in Syria, which they are denied.”
A Baathist law that initially stripped citizen’s rights from 100,000 Kurds in the early 1960s now applies to some 300,000 Kurds in northeastern Syria, he said.
In 2005, President al-Assad promised to address the Kurdish issue in his country, Mr. Badran said.
“Since that promise, the presence of the Mukhabarat in the Kurdish region has only increased,” he said.
