التقرير الاسبوعي ـ عفرين تحت الاحتلال 146
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Afrin under occupation (146):
The violated village of “Qatmeh”, the terrifying “Al-Ra’i” prison, ten ‘martyrs” victims of torture, attacks on civilians and the chaos of carrying arms
What the remaining indigenous people of Afrin suffer from is more than what is mentioned in the reports and headlines.
Daily pressures and harassment are exercised against them, with the aim of displacing them and expropriating the rest of their property, without any conscience, morals or principles; As we continue to highlight the violations and crimes committed:
= Qatmeh village:
It belongs to Shara / Sharran district and is 4 km away from its center. It consists of about /800/ houses, and there were about / 3200 / original Kurdish inhabitants (25% of Yazidis and the rest are Muslims), and after the occupation, about 150 families remained -about 450 people- most of them are old people, and about /3250/ recruited people have been resettled there, in addition to resettling in the camps north and south of the village; During the invasion, the minaret of its mosque and about 7 houses were partially destroyed, and the militias stole the contents of most of the houses of supplies, tools, equipment, gas cylinders, copper utensils, etc., as well as an agricultural tractor belonging to the citizen “Hamid Wessi” and a Hyundai pickup belonging to the citizen “Ahmed Nabil”, in addition to About /650/ homes, the militias seized an olive press belonging to the citizen “Ismail Abdo”, and more than /30/ thousand olive trees (of which / 5 thousand belonged to Ismail Abdo), and fields of cherry trees and grape bushes, in addition to the villa of the late Judge “Hassan” Hassani from Qatmeh and thousands of olive trees belonging to his sons.
The remaining indigenous people were subjected to various types of violations, including the arrest of most men and women with different terms, fines and ransom, and the cutting of 60 olive trees belonging to the citizen “Sadiq Hussein Alo” and /400/ trees belonging to the citizen “Hajj Ahmed Qassem” and dozens of trees for the citizens “Ali Kojo, Yahya Dada, Bashir Majeno” and many of the forest trees in the north of the village, which were also set on fire, and with the intention of establishing a military base north of the village of Al-Malikiyah and at the site of “Behwar” about 270 olive trees belonging to the brothers Hamadush, Ahmed and Amin Qasim from the people of Qatmeh were uprooted, and 100 trees next to it belonging to a citizen from the village of al-Mazraa); The cell phone network towers at the summit overlooking the village were destroyed.
Within the framework of the extremist religious movement, the house of the Yazidi citizen “Hanan Omar” in the village junction was converted into a mosque, and the “White Hands Association” built another new mosque in the village.
Among the villagers, on the night of June 27, 2018, Mrs. Fatima Hamki, 66 years old, wife of Hanan Prem, was martyred after a gunman threw a grenade into her house in the village.
The citizen, “Mohieddin Oso, 77 years old”, was martyred on the night of Saturday/Sunday 25 August 2019, as a result of an armed group storming his house in the Ashrafieh neighborhood of Afrin and beating him severely, his wife, Houria Muhammad Bakr, 74 years old, died on September 6, 2019 when her health deteriorated as a result of the blows, she received that night.
The village had been subjected to several attacks from the direction of the Azaz region, due to its proximity to it.
It was bombed in April 2016 by the Free Army militias, which resulted in the injury of 9 civilians, including women and children, and material damages, and in May 2016 also; In addition to other attacks in previous years.
The militias of “Al-Jabha al-Shamiya, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, Suqur al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham” took control of the village, and they dismantled the railways near Qatmeh station and stole vehicles from it.
It seized the entire “Al-Mafraq” area from the village, the Villa Street, the “Media” canteen building, and the “Oria” hall, and prevented its owners from returning to it (despite the presence of some of their families in Afrin), and turned some of the houses there into military headquarters (Jalal Ezzo, Manan Yassin, Hamid Dada, at the station, and Hussein Murad, Ziyad Ahmed Mukhtar), and also turned the house and shops of the citizen “Nuri Mamo” to a cow breeding facility.
There were reports that the Islamic shrine of “Brim Sadiq” – northwest of the village and its cemetery were subjected to exhumation and vandalism, in addition to the archaeological “Qatmeh” hill, which was excavated to steal its buried treasures.
= The martyr “Masoud Yousef” and the terrifying “Al-Ra’i” prison:
On Wednesday, May 19, 2021 AD, the Martyrs’ Families Foundation in the Autonomous Administration and his relatives announced the news of the death of the citizen “Masoud Yusef Youssef / 42 years old, married and father of two girls” from the village of “Maskeh” – Rajo, they held a funeral ceremony for his passing in the city of Aleppo; The late was arrested during the war on Afrin in March 2018, and was transferred to a prison in Turkey, then he was returned to the prison of the town of Al-Ra’i – Al-Bab area (the basement floor), they were randomly and arbitrarily arrested by the militias of the “Syrian National Army” affiliated with the Syrian-Brotherhood coalition and under the supervision of Turkish intelligence during the spring and summer of 2018, except for those who were taken to Marea’ and Azaz prisons and other secret ones of various militias, on accusations of relationship with the former Autonomous Administration.
Most of the detainees arrived at Al-Ra’i prison exhausted due to torture from the first hours of their detention and during the initial interrogation, and some of them suffered from broken bones; They did not know their whereabouts until after a period of time, and they were not able to know the time and date or night and day because of the permanent darkness in which they lived, and each of them had a number instead of his name, and for more than a year and a half their lunch was lentil soup and a loaf of bread, and they are not allowed to go to the toilets only twice a day, so those who cannot wait are forced to urinate in plastic containers or defecate in bags.
As for the methods of torture, they are no less horrific than the worst in the famous Syrian prisons, where the executioner would wear a mask after eating a meal of narcotic pills and then brutally beat the prisoner, in addition to cases of rape and other atrocities.
At the end of 2019, all detainees had severe chest and intestinal diseases, and as a result of their poor health in advance, about ten of them died during the month of January 2020 without being transferred to hospitals for treatment, and their bodies were transferred at night by the prison administration to be buried in a cemetery secretly and without informing their families until now, among them was the body of the martyr “Masoud Youssef”.
Since the summer of 2020, that is, after nearly two years of enforced disappearance in mass detentions and in harsh conditions, the forcibly disappeared began to be released in batches until now.
The families of the detainees -longing to hear from their loved ones- were not spared from fraud, deception and material extortion.
Most of them paid huge sums of money to find out the fate of their loved ones, or to make phone calls with them, or to speed up the procedures for their transfer and release.
Where the detainee is transferred from his detention to a secret prison near the village of “Qatma” – Afrin for interrogation for several days, and then to the “official” Marateh prison, so that his relatives’ months-long journey begins starting with paying bribes, and “fees” of brokers and lawyers, and the “court” that releases him after collecting the fines as well.
Most of the released suffer from psychological and health problems, and are reluctant to talk about the torments and dark days they have gone through, and to reveal what they have gone through, and are always afraid of being arrested again.
These arrests and the practices accompanying them constitute a crime against humanity and a violation of Article 70 of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949, which does not allow “the occupying power to arrest protected persons, prosecute them, or convict them for acts they committed or opinions they expressed before the occupation…” The Turkish occupation authorities and the “Syrian Coalition, its Interim Government and Syrian National Army” are responsible for it, and they must reveal the fate of the remaining forcibly disappeared and release them, and also the record of the dead in prisons and hand over their remains to their families.
= Violations and chaos:
– In the town of Rajo recently, an armed militia member attacked the citizen, “Amin Muhammad Hanif Sheikh Abdi / 40”, from the village of “Sheikh” and the owner of a sanitary ware shop in Rajo market, which prompted him to defend himself, but the “military police” gathered around him and beat him and forced him to reconcile with the aggressor.
At the beginning of this month, another gunman assaulted Mahmoud Ali Ismail, a resident of the village of “Mamala”, the owner of a shop in Rajo market, because he refused to sell to him on debt, and without the police taking any action against the assailant, despite the victim’s filing a complaint with them.
– After the leader of the “Suqur Al-Shamal Brigade” militia, called Ahmed Ghwayan (Abu Abdo) in the village of Gamrouk-Mabata / Maabatli, employed workers to harvest the peas that he had planted in the seized olive fields for two days without paying them their wages, and their refusal to continue working, He resorted to forcibly gathering men in the village and forcing them to go to the harvest two days before the Ramadan feast without paying any wages.
– On 16/5/2021 AD, one of the recruits who were resettled in the village of “Kila” – Bulbul assaulted the citizen “Mohammed Ali Alo / 37 years” from the village with beatings and threats with weapons, after the latter tried to prevent him from grazing his sheep on a pile of The olive branches were brought for his cattle, and the leader of the “Al-Majd Corps” militia in the village held the citizen “Alo” for hours, subjected him to torture and imposed a ransom in exchange for his release, after he filed a complaint to him about the assault he was subjected to, without investigating the aggressor or punishing him in any way.
The “Civil Defense” in Afrin confirmed that an explosive device planted in a car in the industrial neighborhood of the city exploded at dawn on Wednesday 12/5/2021 AD, which led to the burning of the car without causing any injuries.
– Local media reported that on the evening of Wednesday 19/5/2021 AD, two unidentified persons riding a motorcycle threw a grenade in front of the “Abu Bakr” mosque near the “Newroz” roundabout – the city of Afrin, and its explosion resulted in the injury of a young man; Also, two men recruited in the afternoon of the same day were stabbed with knives by a gunman from the “Sultan Murad Division” militia, in Rajo Street in the city of Afrin.
– In the context of the chaos of carrying arms and the high crime rate, according to local media, on May 18, 2021 AD, the recruited “Mahmoud Neama” from the town of Marea was found murdered near the village of “Anab” – Rubaria, and on May 16, 2021 AD, the recruit Muhammad al-Sharshout, from Idlib, was found killed in the village of Basuta.
– On the day preceding Eid al-Fitr, May 12, 2021 AD, armed militias fired live bullets in the air in the middle of a popular market in the city of Jenderes, it created a state of panic among sellers and shoppers and made them rush and leave what was in their hands, so the goods were scattered, and the armed men and thieves were interested in stealing what was available to their hands of money and goods, in addition to slightly injuring two women.
The people of Afrin are appealing to the international actors in the Syrian arena and the United Nations bodies concerned with Syria to pressure Ankara government to work to reveal the fate of their forcibly disappeared detainees and release them, and to stop the arbitrary arrests of Kurds in the region.
22/05/2021 AD
Media Office – Afrin
The Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria (Yekiti)
Pictures:
– The martyr “Masoud Yusef Yusef”.
– Cutting down forest trees and setting fire to a forest near the village of “Qatmeh” on June 28, 2020 AD.
– Demolition of the minaret of the village of Qatmeh mosque, with the bombing of the Turkish army, February 2018.
– The seizure of two houses in the village of “Qatmeh” by writing “Ahrar al-Sham” on them.
– Al-Ra’i Central Prison – Al-Bab District, north of Aleppo.
Translated by Europe’s Organization of Democratic Unity Kurdish Party in Syria (Yekîti)
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