Afrinpost – Special
The Society for Threatened Peoples (STPI) said that this year, the Turkish government is exporting olive oil again from the Syrian Kurdish region of Afrin, occupied since March 2018, to Germany and other European Union countries.
The association added, in a report published on its official website, that the research conducted by the “Afrinpost” platform generally shows that the Turkish army and its Syrian mercenaries have been looting olive lands in northwest Syria for months. Then Turkish companies transport the stolen olive oil to Turkey through the Hammam border crossing, west of Afrin, and there it is assembled for export.
Dr. Kamal Seydo, a consultant to STP of Middle East, stated that Kurdish farmers have sold their olive oil for more than four US dollars per kilogram. This year they will get less than half of it, likely only a third, and the only buyers belong to the Turkish Agricultural Credit Cooperative (Türkiye Tarım Kredi Kooperatifleri).
The association stated that the leaders of the Turkish-backed Syrian Islamic militias often work as mediators, and these militias take olive oil for free, and they are said to have collected up to 20 tons within days, and the total losses of the olive in the region are estimated at between 65-80 million dollars for the current season, and some of this money went to the Islamic militia in the region.
The robbery and looting policy in Afrin led to complete the destruction of what was once the richest region of Syria. Today, without the help of their family members from abroad, and especially from Germany, the residents of Afrin cannot survive. Usually Kurds in Afrin do not receive support from aid organizations, because it is under the control of the Turkish government and Islamic associations.
According to various estimates, there are about 18 million olive trees in Afrin that provide high-quality fruits. And olives are the most important part of agriculture in the region. The olive harvest season, including pre- and post-processing, ranges from September to February.
What is The Society for Threatened Peoples International STPI?
The association was founded in the early sixties of the last century, and at the beginning it was a small movement in the city of Hamburg in northern Germany at the invitation of Mr. Tillman through during the Biafra War to draw attention of the world to the occurrences within Biafra in present-day Nigeria and to stop the hunger and genocide going on there. Eighties of the last century, the association moved its work to the city of Göttingen and opened a branch in Berlin and then branches in the countries bordering the Federal Republic of Germany such as (Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, northern Italy, where there is a German minority in the Italian section), and it took the character or status of observer in the European Union and a member Observer of the United Nations.
The association consists of several departments concerned with the threatened concerns of the peoples of the world, and it includes a special section for the Middle East, in which Dr. Kamal Seydo has been in charge since 2006 and has been a member of the association since 1993 and has worked throughout the years on a voluntary basis. A branch of the association has been opened in Erbil.
The association is concerned with human issues and respect and preservation of human dignity as in the Amnesty International Organization, but it is distinguished by concern for the human being as a group and not as individuals, and its firm stance towards the rights of minorities and the genocide to which those components are exposed in countries that do not respect the humanity of these groups as it proposes and demands international protection and military intervention if It was necessary in cases that threaten these groups, such as human genocide or the massacres committed against these groups.
Some of the association’s activities for Afrin:
-Statement on 11/24/2020 to demand the international community to place the coalition on the list of organizations supporting and financing terrorism, cutting off all material and moral support from it, and refusing to deal with it as a representative of the Syrian people Condemning and denouncing the suspicious and rented visits of the coalition leaders to the occupied territories in order to perpetuate and legitimize the occupation and beautify its criminal record.
-Statement on 05/11/2020, within 28 human rights and civil organizations, to appeal to the management of the German Association for the Aid of Hunger in the World, to withdraw its announced bid for the cladding of “400” houses in Afrin and Azaz, because it is dedicated to the occupation process in northern Syria.
-10/24/2020, a sit-in to condemn the Turkish occupation
-Statement on 05/29/2020 within 20 Syrian civil, human rights, media, civil and human rights organizations to appeal to the UN Security Council for the United Nations to intervene to put an end to crimes and violations against the residents of occupied Afrin
-23/1/2018 The organization said that the Kurds in Afrin canton, which is witnessing violent battles, are making serious accusations against the German government, and confirming that Turkish forces used German weapons and tanks in their attack against peaceful Kurdish villages.
-3/17/2018, called on Germany and the countries of NATO to demand that Turkey, which is a partner in the alliance, “immediately end its war crimes”. “It is not possible for NATO to support the undermining of international humanitarian law, which explicitly seeks to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts,” said Ulrich Delius, director of the association.
-2/6/2018, within 13 Kurdish political, human rights and cultural organizations, in a memorandum to António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Prince Zeid bin Raad al-Hussein, High Commissioner for the Commission for Human Rights, called for intervention to end the violations of the Turkish occupation in Afrin.
-7/18/2018 The Association issued strong criticism and held the Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army responsible for the events in Afrin region.
-In July 2018, a 32-page document in German, with an English copy, was prepared and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, to the governments of the European Union and the international socialist parties, to the permanent member states of the Security Council and to the world press, regarding the dire and worsening situation in Afrin on The hand of the Turkish occupation and the armed factions it supports.
-9/15/2019, participated with human rights and civil organizations in criticizing the report of the International Investigation Commission on Syria and expressed its legal observations.
-14/10/2019, along with 32 organizations, called on France as a permanent member of the Security Council to fulfill its moral and humanitarian responsibilities to secure protection for the inhabitants of the northern regions of Syria, including Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syrians and Armenians, and to issue a Security Council resolution demanding Turkey to stop its aggressive operations in Syria and to withdraw immediately from all Syrian lands, especially Afrin.
