Kurdish human rights worker and correspondent for the Society for Threatened Peoples arrested in Syria

The Syrian Kurdish human rights worker and correspondent for the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), Maschal Tamo, was arrested in the early hours of Friday morning. His relatives have been refused all information as to where the spokesperson for the Kurdish Movement for the Future is being held, said his wife on the telephone to the GfbV on Friday morning. Tamo wanted to leave the town of Ain al-Arab, some 440 km from Damascus, by car at around 2.30 a.m. when he was stopped by Syrian security forces and arrested. Friends informed his wife in the town of Kamischli. Tamo provides regular information for the GfbV on the human rights situation in Syria. Since mishandling and torture in police custody are customary in Syria the GfbV is most concerned about the well-being of their correspondent.

The GfbV will address itself to international institutions and the foreign ministries of democratic states with the request to work for the immediate release of Maschal Tamo.

In Syria there are some 150 Kurds being held in prison as political prisoners. The GfbV has the names of 73 prisoners. The approximately two million Syrian Kurds, who form the majority of the population in three regions on the Syrian border with Turkey, are still today being discriminated or suppressed. Their rights in terms of language and culture are being withheld. In 1962 300,000 Kurds had their Syrian citizenship withdrawn in the course of the drastic policy of Arabicization. Since then international human rights organisations, among them the GfbV, have been calling for their citizenship to be restored.