Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition
Department of Media and Communications
March 12, 2022
Today marks the 18th anniversary of the March 12 uprising that the Syrian Kurds started in the towns of Qamishli, Amuda where a statue of Assad the dictator was destroyed, Afrin, Ayn al-Arab (Kobani), and Aleppo, all the way to Damascus. The Assad regime responded to the uprising by live fire and mass arrests that affected hundreds of young people.
Dozens were shot by intelligence agents and security forces of the Assad regime which had always sought to tear the social fabric and sow division among the people of the one nation. Hundreds more were detained and subjected to torture and intimidation for months and years.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) salutes our Syrian Kurdish people, especially the families of the fallen heroes of the March 2004 Uprising. That day was a sign of the fighting spirit of the Syrian people’s and also a cry reflecting the pain they are experiencing and the injustice they are being subjected to. It also demonstrated their longing for freedom and emancipation from tyranny.
Our people in the Jazira and east of the Euphrates are still suffering under a repressive authority of a new color: a militia claiming to represent the Kurds. This militia practices everything that the Assad regime was practicing against the Syrian Kurds, including murder, repression, arrest, distortion of educational curricula, and kidnapping of children and taking them to forced conscription camps.
The SOC calls on our people in east of the Euphrates with all its components, especially the Kurds, to renew the 2004 uprising and the 2011 revolution against the PYD terrorist militia, which is affiliated with the PKK organization, and to force them from Syria to Qandil Mountain where they came from, and also against the murderous Assad regime. It also calls on the international community to lift any cover from this militia, stop supporting it, pressure it to release the detainees, stop torture, and the kidnapping and recruitment of children.
The SOC renews its emphasis on the values ​​of freedom and citizenship as well as the importance of strengthening confidence among all the Syrian people. It also stresses the importance of preserving the principles of the great Syrian revolution and the commitment to an inclusive national project that seeks to build a civil, democratic state that safeguards the rights of all components and ends all forms of oppression and discrimination in a framework that guarantees the unity of the Syrian people and the integrity of Syrian territory.
