Afrinpost – Special
“I cannot speak much, they say that the phones are monitored, and that there are cars roaming in Afrin to monitor calls.” With those words, “Abu Jiyan \ a pseudonym for security reasons”, tried to express to “Afrinpost” their concerns about reporting violations that occur in Afrin .
The man’s speech illustrates the serious concerns of the media and the documentation centers for violations, in light of the attempts of Islamic militias affiliated with the Turkish occupation and the Muslim Brotherhood to trace the sources of information, or kidnap citizens based on information from settlers.
Abu Jiyan adds: “We do not know exactly if it is possible to track us, but we are very afraid of that. We lived what we lived here, and we all realize the saying (the walls have ears), which do not leave us at present, and therefore we resort to speaking in the language of puzzles in In many cases, this sometimes makes the information incomplete.
The organizations’ silence ..
The Kurdish media worker, “Amina Mesto”, who is based in Europe, confirms the talk of “Abu Jiyan”, and she says about that to “Afrinpost”: “What we have been able to document represents only 10 percent of the violations that occur in the region.”
She added: “Afrin is subject to the genocide of the Kurds in light of the continuous silence of international human rights organizations, which come out every time with timid reports on the crimes practiced by the Turkish occupation and its radical factions.”
Misto believes that the “Turkish MIT”, which is based in the village of Za’ara in the Bulbula district in the northern Afrin countryside, has headquarters, supervising all militias and every militia belonging to a Turkish officer, and therefore this dangerous network makes the documentation difficult to the extent that it prefers silence to spread the violation.
Continuing: “There are no activists or media outlets inside the city, everyone has escaped and those who remain subject to arrest and torture by the factions, and in recent times, the Turkish intelligence services accompany the factions publicly during the kidnapping of civilians.”
Overseas activists ..
“According to the activists that we communicate with, Turkish intelligence follows the networks of communication and social communication and they have a list of activists who document violations abroad, to the point that merely contacting that person or having his name on his phone is a charge sufficient for kidnapping,” Mesto said.
Mesto notes that they had to change their names and use fake names abroad and inside, saying: “We had to delete our pictures on the communication sites.” At the same time, she points to a state of despair that has begun to control civilians inside.
She says: “Most violations reach us from civilians who lost hope for their liberation, and every militia has a list of names and pictures of activists who communicate with civilians inside.”
The fear of the victims ..
“Bassam Al-Ahmad,” the executive director of “Syrians for Truth and Justice” organization, says that “there is no easy documentation in countries where conflicts and wars are prevalent, because we are talking about parties to conflict controlling parties, and also we are talking about victims who are afraid of giving testimonies. The obstacles are the same. In Afrin and the rest of the conflict areas.
” In the case of Afrin, there are many obstacles, including access to the occupied area and large groups of militants and Turks and the accompanying restrictions on people, so there is a difficulty for independent parties and international organizations to reach the area to listen to the people, photograph them, listen to their testimonies and conduct interviews, All this is considered major obstacles to conducting independent investigations, as is happening in other regions.
Ignorance of the laws ..
He notes on the subject of verification of information, that “usually the people inside or the remaining activists publish inaccurate news, which requires verification in it more and thus adds a new obstacle to documentation,” noting that “not all people or activists have sufficient knowledge of international laws Regarding violations, and this can be considered a new obstacle to documentation. ”
Al-Ahmad concludes saying: “Despite all the obstacles, it is very important to break them up and try to solve them so that documentation on the issue of arrests, kidnappings and seizures of property of people, trees, homes and olives can be documented.
It is necessary to collect all the news that can be gathered against all obstacles.”
Efforts..
Despite what activists face inside Afrin, many news observatories are working to document the violations taking place in Afrin, but all that is documented does not constitute any of the real violations on the ground, as the absence of actual activists on the ground, and the displacement of the vast majority of young people, led to The region remains free from the group able to follow events periodically, while the majority of the remaining, especially from the elderly people , are unaware of using modern communication tools, which keeps many violations and crimes without documentation, to go and get lost with the winds of time.
