Taking place nearly three years after Turkey and its Syrian proxies took control of Afrin with the stated aim of removing Kurdish forces on its borders, the conference was attended by human rights organizations, activists, lawyers among others, as well as witnesses and survivors of crimes.
Asmahan Hassan, 42, a mother of four, was among the attendees. She fled the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018, only to lose her son in Aleppo’s town of Tel Rifaat when a bomb fell on the house they sought refuge in.
“When my son was martyred it was really tough. The situation is not good in Tel Rifaat, a week ago there were shellings again. Fourteen young men, two children, a woman, and a man were martyred,” she told Rudaw’s Viviyan Fetah on Saturday at the conference. “Whenever my children hear a sound, they get scared and say bombs are coming. We are always being bombarded.”
Turkish-backed groups have been widely accused of human rights violations against Afrin’s locals, including kidnap, looting and extortion.
Accusations in the area, including land theft, have rung out since the invasion in March 2018, dubbed Operation Olive Branch. Human rights groups and the United Nations have published reports detailing arbitrary arrests, detention and pillaging, among other violations.
According to data collected by five organizations from Syria, including the Syria Human Rights Organization in Afrin and Rojava Center for Strategic Studies, and handed out to participants at the forum that Rudaw obtained a copy of, at least 70 people were reportedly killed in Afrin in explosions and clashes in 2020, as well as 97 injured, in addition to around 970 kidnappings and 65 cases of torture.
“This forum’s main aim is to show the abuses that are being committed so that they are discussed internationally,” Mizgin Hassan, a member of the conference’s preparatory committee, told Fetah.
Afrin was under the control of Kurdish forces from early on in the Syrian uprising until March 2018, until Turkey and its Syrian proxies invaded the enclave.
Amnesty International found shortly after the invasion that the “Turkish occupation of Afrin has led to widespread human rights violations.”
In its annual report for 2019, the rights group documented the arbitrary detention of more than 50 locals, among a “wide range of abuses” against Afrin’s civilians.
Sixteen people, including two minors, were kidnapped and tortured in Afrin’s village of Kakhara by a Turkish-backed Syrian armed group on Wednesday, the Afrin-based Human Rights Organization Ibrahim Sheikho told Rudaw on Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the year, nearly 100 people have been arrested, including women and children, Sheikho told Rudaw’s Omer Kalo on Wednesday.
Turkey-backed rebels have been accused of cutting down masses of Afrin’s famous olive trees, which was many people’s source of living for decades by producing olive oil in the area's mild climate.
