Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition – Syria
Department of Media and Communications
August 04, 2020
Increasing reports of assassinations targeting tribal leaders and notables in eastern Syria have recently become a new norm representing a dangerous escalation.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition holds the PYD militia responsible for these crimes as the de facto authority assuming control over the region and given its proven track record of murder, assassinations, terrorism, torture, arrest, and mass forced displacement.
The tribal leaders’ prudence has so far prevented further escalation, especially when we take into account that some of these assassinations targeted Arab tribal leaders and notables in the region.
These assassinations and lack of security aim, inter alia, to cause chaos and divert attention away from other things taking place in the region, including demographic change, seizure of the country’s resources, mass forced displacement, ethnic discrimination, increasing arrests, and forced recruitment.
These assassinations cannot be separated from the general context in which they are occurring, especially with the burgeoning popular anger rejecting the PYD’s recent adoption of new educational curricula and the latest agreements aimed at seizing the region’s resources from their rightful owners.
