The past few days have seen increasing violations by the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) against civilians and displaced persons in the areas under its control. The Syrian Coalition has strongly condemned these violations, most notably the murder, arbitrary arrests and torture of civilians. The Coalition said that the PYD militia is copying the Assad regime’s repressive policies aimed at intimidating and terrorizing Syrian civilians.
In a press release issued on Wednesday, the Coalition called for a complete and immediate cessation of all forms of support for the PYD militia as it denounced the lukewarm position some countries are showing towards the terrorist threat being posed by this militia.
The Coalition affirmed its condemnation of these violations, kidnappings and intimidation of the civilian population as it expressed its full solidarity with the local residents and the internally displaced persons who went on a general strike in Manbij to protest against these violations.
“The PYD militia responded to the strike by opening fire at the shops whose owners closed down, an act that is reminiscent of the Assad regime’s attempts to suppress the popular uprising in its infancy,” the Coalition said.
“The reprehensible crimes and violations being committed by the PYD militia also affected the IDPs as the militia is preventing them from returning to their villages and towns in the Afrin area.”
The PYD militia kidnapped several displaced households, including women and children, and took them to an unknown location. PYD militiamen also seized identity cards of residents of the IDPs camps to force them to stay inside. Two of the displaced people were killed after the PYD militia opened fire to disperse a demonstration that the IDPs staged to demand that they are allowed to return to their homes in Afrin.
The Coalition called attention to hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced from the areas that are currently under the control of the PYD militia, stressing the need to allow them to return to their towns and villages and provide guarantees for their safety.
The PYD “terrorist” militia launched a campaign of arrests, kidnappings and house-to-house raids in eastern rural Raqqa, the town of Manbij in rural Aleppo, and Hasaka province searching for young men to forcibly recruit them into its ranks. The militias also violently detained a number of people in rural Raqqa and took them to an unknown destination under false pretexts and accusations. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
