The Democratic Union Party (PYD) General Assembly made a statement concerning the latest refugee boat sinking and said that the Turkish state is engaged in human smuggling and is responsible.

The PYD statement released on Thursday includes the following:

“We are sorry to learn that dozens of Kurdish youths, mostly from Kobanê, lost their lives after their boat sank while trying to cross from Algeria to Europe. We offer our condolences to the families and relatives of those who lost their lives in the incident.

The displacement policy is one of the main methods that enemies of the Kurds have used against us for centuries. Migration has increased for various reasons, such as massacres, killings, oppression, restriction of living conditions and organization of human trafficking groups.

With the beginning of the Syrian revolution, the fascist Turkish state established refugee camps along the Syrian border, encouraging Syrians to migrate and become refugees. The aim is to force the indigenous inhabitants of the region to migrate and replace them by terrorist groups and their families. The plan is still in place. As we have witnessed in all the areas occupied by the Turkish state, human trafficking continues on a systematic basis.

Not contended with what it has done in the occupied territories, the Turkish state is now spreading the war everywhere.

Even though Turkey signed two ceasefire agreements with Russia and the US, it bombs all the regions in Rojava every day. Its aim is to intimidate people, to evacuate villages and towns, and to undermine the stability of the region. Moreover, in cooperation with the Syrian regime and its supporters, it has besieged Rojava in order to deprive its residents of their basic needs. And economic crises emerged as the people of the region had no opportunities for employment and production.

Further to that, the enemies of the Kurds organized human trafficking groups through their intelligence services. They steal and plunder people's money and goods in return for taking them to Europe. These refugees die of cold or starvation or suffocate in trucks. Or human traffickers put them on death boats. In any case, the enemy gets rid of refugees either by their deaths or by taking them to a foreign country where they will be assimilated.

We believe that he who leaves his land and country is like a tree which is uprooted. He will either be drowned or left for an uncertain destiny in a society and land that are not his.  It will be us, our nation and our country that will lose. The loss suffered most recently is thus a great loss for our nation and country.

We call on the youth not to leave their lands and people and to work to rebuild their country. They should not be deceived by human traffickers. We offer our condolences to the families of our young people who lost their lives in this incident.

We will do our best to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again by fighting these groups that deceive our youth.”