Afrin IDPs in northern Aleppo demonstrate against “Turkish violations” in the Kurdish region

The Council of Martyrs’ Families of Afrin region (an administrative division of the Autonomous Administration) has organized a protest against the violations of Turkey and its affiliated Syrian opposition groups in Afrin, northwestern Syria, on the road to the village of Tal Soseen to Sardam camp in the northern countryside of Aleppo.

Thousands of families of those who lost their lives during the battles against the Turkish army and Turkey-backed armed opposition militias’ invasion of the Syrian-Kurdish region of Afrin last year. 

The protesters raised pictures of their children who lost their lives, chanting slogans “Popular resistance of Afrin residents gives life to the rest of its people”, as they demanded the Turkish army and its affiliated armed groups must be driven out of Afrin, so they could return to their homes under international protection.

Iman Hassan, a protester who lost her husband during the battle of Afrin, told North-Press that she condemned: “The Turkish occupation and the pressure imposed on them in the areas of displacement”, stressing that they are “the owners of a cause”.

Regarding the purpose of the protest, Sharvin Rifaat, an administrator of the Martyrs’ Families Council, said that they had staged this protest in order to express their condemnation and denouncing of “the violations committed by Turkey, which have exceeded the limits of killing, looting and destruction of houses, against the original people of the region of Afrin”.

Rifaat pointed out that they “will not give up their land and their right of the return”.

Rifaat appealed to the international community and human rights organizations, to “safeguard the rights of peoples who demand freedom, to break international silence regarding the issue of their rights”.

The demonstrators gathered in the square of Sardam IDP camp, where Zakia Ismail, an administrative member of the Martyrs’ Families Council, delivered a statement to the public opinion, expressing their condemnation of all violations conducted by Turkey in Afrin, including killing, kidnapping, destruction and systematic displacement that seeks to make demographic change in the Kurdish region.

The statement expressed “condemnation of the shelling which targets civilians who were forcibly displaced to the northern countryside of Aleppo, and the villages of Sherawa district in the region of Afrin”.

The Turkish army and its affiliated armed opposition groups had launched “Olive Branch”  military campaign early last year, and managed to take control over the northwestern Syrian-Kurdish region of Afrin in March last year, after fierce battles against the local forces of People’s Protection Units (YPG).