Ongoing military operations and communications blackout in Kurdish village
What’s Happening in Kuruköy? We demand urgent information from reliable sources.
For the last nine days, there has been no communication with the people in Kuruköy (Xereba Bava), a village in Turkey’s southeastern district of Nusaybin (Mardin province), that is under round-the-clock military curfew and has been cut off from electrical and telephone services in the region.
Gory images and videos on social media, posted with the title ‘Images taken by soldiers’, only serve to increase our worries. We have received statements from residents of neighboring villages that all Kuruköy inhabitants have been gathered in one house, their phones have been collected, and some are being systematically tortured and executed. Relatives of villagers have made similar claims. One of our deputies was able to talk to an inhabitant of the village. (Please see the appendix.)
HDP deputies were denied entry to the village yesterday. The fact that deputies are denied entry to the village raises suspicion that the allegations of human rights abuses may be real. Our deputies’ attempts to talk to the governor and the Ministry of Interior were of no avail. HDP deputies remain at the village’s perimeters and despite their efforts to gather information, no concrete progress has been made.
If these allegations are correct, the residents of Kuruköy are being subjected to inhumane and unacceptable treatment. What Kurds went through in the 1990s and experienced in the last two years increase our concerns regarding the fate of Kuruköy villagers.
We urge international organizations as well as all democratic entities and peace coalitions to immediately investigate the allegations regarding Kuruköy. We cannot remain silent in the face of oppression and attempted massacres.
Peoples’ Democratic Party
Central Executive Board
Appendix
The statement below belongs to an inhabitant of Kuruköy.
”We are 10 people in the same house. We haven’t been able to go out for 9 days. We now have no food or water. During these 9 days soldiers raided our house several times. They rush in and search the place all over. They continuously curse and insult us. The children and women also face these curses and insults. They have tortured a 16 year old child who is with us now. They took this child out and tortured him. Then they threw him in front of our door. Now he keeps moaning because of the torture he went through. We dont know about the situation in the village because we can’t go out. However, the village is full of soldiers they have surrounded everywhere. Reach us urgently.”
