Kurdish politician arrested

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) learnt today that the deputy chairperson of the Syrian Kurdish Azadi Party, Mustafa Jum´a, was arrested last Tuesday (6.1.) by Syrian security forces after a trial in Aleppo. The Kurdish politician had been summoned to appear before the military secret service. According to reports from his party the 62-year old father was transferred to Damascus last Saturday. He is being held at present by the military secret service in the so-called Fir´a Vilistin near the Syrian capital.

Mustafa Jum´a was born in the north-Syrian department of Aleppo in the district of Kobane (Ain-al-Arab) and is the father of twelve children. The Azadi Party is one of the four organisations in the so-called Kurdish Democratic Alliance (KDA). The KDA works with peaceful means for the human rights of Kurds in cooperation with the Arab Syrian opposition parties for a democratisation of the country.

The GfbV is writing today to all EU embassies in the Syrian capital with the request that they speak up for the immediate release of Mustafa Jum´a.

In Syria about 150 Kurds are being held in prison as political prisoners. The GfbV has the names of 98 of them. The approximately two million Syrian Kurds, who make up the majority of the population in the three regions on the border between Syria and Turkey, are being discriminated or suppressed. Their rights to their language and culture are being denied. In 1962 in the general process of Arabicisation the Syrian citizenship of 300,000 Kurds was withdrawn. The GfbV has always called for the restoration of their rights as Syrian citizens.