The Turkish-backed militia Liwa Samarkand kidnapped seven people, including two minors, from the village of Mezin in Afrin’s Sherawa district at the weekend. The abducted persons are Ehmed Ezîz and his son Xalid Ezîz, Ebdulkerîm Hemade and his son Rêzan Hemade and Nîzar Şikrî Çîlo. The names of the other abductees are not known. A ransom is demanded for their release.

Afrin is occupied by Turkey since March 2018. Kidnappings are a common source of income for the Islamist mercenaries of the Turkish state. Since the beginning of the occupation of Afrin, human rights violations and war crimes have been on the agenda in what was once the safest region of all Syria. In addition to a classic colonial policy, Turkey continues to practice a policy of ethnic cleansing, which has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their ancestral settlements. The demographic change in favour of Turkey and its Islamist invasion forces, crimes such as kidnapping, torture, extortion and murder are happening with the de facto approval of the international community of states.

The women of Afrin in particular suffer from the invasion. Between March 2018 and November 2019 alone, the Afrin Human Rights Association documented 1200 cases of violence by the occupying forces. According to this, 40 women were murdered, 60 women became the target of sexual violence, one hundred women were physically tortured and almost 1000 women were abducted. The number of unreported cases is probably much higher. At least five women took their own lives in the same period as a result of the violence of the occupying forces.