RAQQA, Syria
The alleged human rights violations of the pro-Kurdish People’s Defense Unit’s (YPG) in northern Syria have reached dimensions of ethnic cleansing, a local Syrian activist has claimed.
Ahmed al-Hajj Salih, a former member of the Tal Abyad’s city council, told Anadolu Agency on Thursday that the YPG was plundering homes of civilians and forcing Syrian Arabs living in the suburbs of Tal Abyad, a Syrian border city under the al-Raqqa governorate, to migrate.
"Violations in Tal Abyad’s suburbs have reached the dimensions of ethnic cleansing, torture and murder," Salih said.
He also said that the YPG was allegedly acting in coordination with a Syrian Kurdish Christian force called the Sutoro, both of which were plundering the Nus Tel, Hashishe and Ufla villages in Raqqa.
He added that the YPG had detained hundreds of people in Raqqa’s northern suburbs.
“Signs of torture were found in the bodies of some people who were detained by the YPG and later found dead in Ayn Isa and some other villages,” he said.
Salih also claimed that the pro-Kurdish forces had threatened the people of Irtuvaziyye village, located along the Aleppo- Al-Hassakeh road, to flee their homes.
According to the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, the YPG forces are following relocation policies against Turkmen and Arabs living in northern Syria.
Turkey’s National Security Council on Monday expressed its concern about attempts to change the demography in Syria in the ongoing fight along its border.
In recent days, Turkish media reports have claimed the pro-Kurdish forces have been trying to change the demographic structure of northern Syria with the aim of establishing a Kurdish state, stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea.
YPG is the armed wing of the pro-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which Turkey has designated as a terror organization.
