By Mustafa Mohammed
To the American public:
As a result of the military domination of Syrian life for decades, Syrian society has turned into a den of corruption, violations of human rights, and confiscation of freedoms and rights of citizenship. This has developed before the eyes of the international public, including silent democratic societies.
Syria has lived in a state of perpetual and painful crisis, due to the dictatorship of the regime and its repressive security forces. The regime continues to thwart people from participating in any form of free and fair parliamentary elections. It stamps out political pluralism. It refuses to allow the people to exercise the right to manage the state and its institutions according to democratic norms. Decades have passed and the Constitution remains suspended. The rule of law still consists of customary laws and emergency judgments.
Through the human rights violations carried out by the Syrian government, a racist policy is being inflicted upon the Kurdish people in Syria to empty the country of its Kurdish citizens. This includes the Arabization of the Kurdish region; the lack of recognition of Kurds as the second nation in Syria; the denial of all national rights of a people living on its own land; the suppression of democratic votes through arrest, terrorism, murder, torture, and confiscation of land; and many other forms of repression and persecution.
Our message to the American people and its democratic institutions is to mark the anniversary of Syria’s racist policy of stripping more than half a million Syrian Kurds of their Syrian nationality in order to change the demographic profile of the country’s Kurdish region.
On October 5th, 1962 the Syrian authorities deprived its Kurdish people of their Syrian nationality. They are deprived of all civil and human rights like the right to own property obtains a higher education, travel, vote and hold governmental jobs. The prolongation of this policy has extended to affect the children of the Kurdish people, creating a second generation of stateless people who are deprived of these and more rights.
These violations are committed despite the Syrian Nationality Act of 1951, which provides the right of everyone to acquire the nationality of the state who lives there as their home. These violations are committed despite Syria being one of the member states of the United Nations, and having ratified and signed many international treaties on human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the Convention of the Protection of the Rights of the Child in 1989. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 specifically affirms that every individual has the right to gain a nationality, that no individual can be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality, and that no individual can be denied the right to change his nationality.
We present this human tragedy of the Kurdish people in Syria before your conscience to judge with justice and fairness, on the basis that we are human beings on earth who also value humaneness and justice, who respect and revere the maintenance of human rights in the world and contained in the UN Charter, who are committed to human rights and non-discrimination on the basis of race, color, and religion, and who encourage states and peoples to exercise universal respect for human rights and the sacred human freedoms.
Mustafa Mohammed – A former member in the Syrian Parliament : mmkurdo@yahoo.com
