Kurdish PYD-YPG Shamelessly Terrorizes Christian Churches In Northeast Syria
- Post 22 September 2021
On 21 September 2021, the Kurdish PYD/YPG militia in Northeast Syria once again abused Western support to terrorize the defenseless Christians of Qamishli, the stated capital of their self-proclaimed ‘West Kurdistan’. This time, they kidnapped an eminent member of the local Church Board, which resists attempts to Kurdify the private Aramean schools.
A threat made a week earlier by an Aramean to his kinsmen was executed yesterday by the Kurdish PYD/YPG. Around 1.30 p.m. local time, a jeep with armed men violently seized Mr. George Safar, a prominent member of the Church Board, from the street because he is in charge of the Aramaic schools. This prompted a visit by the Vice Chairman Mr. Abdelmasih Malko and his colleague Ms. Shmuni Hardo (also engaged in the schools) to the YPG office in Qamishli.
After being interrogated and intimidated, the two representatives warned that if Mr. Safar would not be immediately released, massive demonstrations would take place the next day with the participation of the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop and the brother of the kidnapped man, the Archbishop of Zahle and Bekaa in Lebanon H.E. Mor Justinus Boulos Safar, who was repulsed by this criminal deed and expressed his determination to join the protest.
In order to avoid global attention focused on their ongoing human rights violations, many of which remain unreported, the PYD/YPG later released the hostage around 8.30 p.m. Arameans nevertheless remain appalled by this latest act of terror by the PYD/YPG and its Aramean proxy.
As Board Member of the Church Board representing the four Syriac Orthodox Churches of Qamishli,
Mr. George Safar is in charge of the Arameans schools
With the start of the new school year in Syria, the tiny minority of Arameans serving the PYD/YPG, which is the PKK’s branch in Syria that controls the Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), again began to bully their fellow people into replacing the teachers and textbooks of the private Aramean schools with substitutes of Kurdish PYD/YPG making.
WCA recently received alarming reports from its local members concerning this lasting issue. In a meeting last week with the Church Board representing all Aramean Christians of Qamishli, one PYD/YPG loyalist by the name of Kino, speaking on behalf of the Aramaic association of Olaf Taw that is part of the Directorate of Education of the so-called Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA) in Northeast Syria, had made threats like: “One way or another, you will replace our teachers and books with yours. Otherwise you will face the consequences.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a community leader from Qamishli clarified why they resist the syllabus that is being pushed for by the PYD/YPG Kurds and their Aramean henchmen:
“On behalf of the PYD/YPG, they use our language as a medium to instill PKK’s separatist ideas in our children because the vast majority of the Christians are against the SDF, the PYD/YPG/PKK and their proxies. They propagate that they care about the Aramean people and their Aramaic language. In reality, all they care about is power and ideology. Their books are distorted and nationalistic, political and ideological in character.”
Arameans in Syria believe that the issue is not over yet and that sooner or later it will pop up again until the goal of the PYD/YPG and its lackeys has been achieved. In the last years, they have repeatedly tried to impose the Kurdish textbooks on Aramean schools. WCA and Arameans worldwide have thus frequently condemned these and other egregious human rights violations, calling upon Western countries to halt their support to these opportunistic nationalists.
Their tacit demographic engineering project, namely to silently eliminate the native Aramean Christians and other ethno-religious groups from the region with the aim of Kurdifying it, may be unclear to Western media and politicians, but it is crystal clear to the Aramean Christians.
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Download the Press Release here.
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POSTSCRIPT: THE ARAMEAN PEOPLE IN (NORTHEAST) SYRIA |
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Unfounded statements appearing sometimes in the media mention the number of 100,000 to 150,000 Christians in Northeast Syria. In reality, however, there are no more than 50,000 Christians left in this region. Virtually all of them had left the area between 2011 and early 2019. Either because of the death and destruction caused by Jihadist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS whose aim was the establishment of a Caliphate in which the state should be governed under sharia or as a result of the self-declared tyrannical rule of the PYD/YPG (PKK) Kurds whose stated goal was the creation of an independent Kurdish statelet called Kurdistan, which should be administrated by authoritarian Marxist-Leninist or communist principles. |
