An Assyrian human rights group held the militias of the Democratic Unity (PYD) responsible for the killing of an Assyrian academic in Hasakah province and called for international investigations into the crime. The PYD administration is “unreliable and not impartial”, the group said.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Assyrian Network for Human Rights said that the assassination of Dr. Elias Isaq “is part of a series of liquidation, kidnapping and arrest of prominent Assyrian figures in Syria to force this integral Syrian component to leave its towns and villages.”
“We are deeply concerned by the practices of the de facto authority in Hasakah province,” the statement said referring to the administration announced by the PYD and its affiliated militias in northeastern Syria. It added that this authority is represented by the remnants of the Assad regime and the PYD’s police force.
The Network pointed out that “the PYD militias have been already involved in the assassination of deacon David Jando.” It added that the PYD’s self-proclaimed administration is “neither reliable nor impartial,” stressing that its present and past practices do not allow them to conduct independent criminal investigations to reveal those involved in the assassination and bring them to justice.
The Network called upon the PYD to “immediately grant independent international investigators access to Hasakah and Qamishli to launch full, thorough criminal investigations to expose the crimes against the Syriac Assyrian people in Syria.”
The Assyrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said that “an unknown terrorist group” assassinated the Assyrian academic Dr. Elias Kafarkis Isaq, former Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural in the University of Euphrates in the city of Hasaka, three days after he was kidnapped. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)