KurdistanObserver.com

Over 50 Kurds Go On Hunger Strike In Syrian Jail

AP-Feb 12, 2005- More than 50 Kurdish detainees have begun a hunger strike to protest "inhuman treatment and torture" they suffer in a northern Syrian jail, a human rights activist said Saturday.

Anwar al-Bunni, a lawyer and a member of the Human Rights Association in Syria, said the detainees, including 10 women, belong to the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party, PKK. They were arrested in May 2004 in a campaign against the PKK following an improvement in Syrian-Turkish relations and have not yet been brought to trial.

In a faxed statement, al-Bunni said the Kurds, all Syrian citizens, are forced to sleep on the floor and endure daily beatings. They began the hunger strike Tuesday at the Adra prison 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Damascus, he said.

Syria's crackdown on the PKK includes the Dec. 26 conviction of a Kurdish man for belonging to the outlawed group. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

It was the first conviction in Syria of a member of the PKK, whose leader Abdullah Ocalan is imprisoned in Turkey.

The conviction appeared to be an attempt by Syria to further consolidate its relations with Turkey, which remained strained for much of the 1980s and 1990s when Turkey accused Syria of harboring Turkish Kurd guerrillas, including Ocalan.

Relations improved after 1998 when Syria, bowing to Turkish pressure, expelled Ocalan. The following year Ocalan was captured and imprisoned in Turkey.

There are about 1.5 million Kurds in Syria, Turkey's southern neighbor, including 160,000 who are denied citizenship in Syria, a nation of 18.5 million. They have long complained they lack basic rights and say the government neglects the region of northern Syria where they live.