Human rights in the DAANES
Some Circassian, Kurdish and Chechen tribes cooperated with the Ottoman (Turkish) authorities in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides in Upper Mesopotamia, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias.
[11][12] Expressions of Kurdish identity like songs and folk dances were outlawed[11][13] and frequently prosecuted under a purpose-built criminal law against "weakening national sentiment".
[13] In 1973 the Syrian authorities confiscated 750 square kilometers of fertile agricultural land in Al-Hasakah Governorate, which were owned and cultivated by tens of thousands of Kurdish citizens, and gave it to Arab families brought in from other provinces.
[13][15] In 2007 in another such scheme in Al-Hasakah Governorate 6,000 square kilometers around Al-Malikiyah were granted to Arab families, while tens of thousands of Kurdish inhabitants of the villages concerned were evicted.
[18] After the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the government forces withdrew from most of the Rojava region in 2012, leaving control to local militias, notable exceptions until today being the airport and the area south of Qamishli and the city center of as well as a military base close to Al-Hasakah.
Most opposition militias — outside of the NES-associated Syrian Democratic Forces umbrella — are not secular but follow Islamist ideologies,[22][23] causing the respective human rights issues in areas under their control.
[24][25] A report by the UN Human Rights Council alleged that since July 2013, Al-Nusra Front, at times in coordination with other armed groups, carried out a series of killings of Kurdish civilians in Al Youssoufiyah, Qamishli and Al-Asadia in Al-Hasakah Governorate, the Jazira Region.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has stated that ISIL "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey".
[36][37] Its fighters systematically looted and destroyed the property of Kurds, and in some cases, resettled displaced Arab Sunni families from the Qalamoun area (Rif Damascus), Dayr Az-Zawr and Raqqa in abandoned Kurdish homes.
[51] On 13 June it was reported that before their withdrawal from the countryside of Manbij, ISIS jihadis broke into civilians' houses in dozens of villages, killing the men and raping the women.
[69] YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said: "Very simply, this is a false allegation,"[70] and PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim strictly denied the Amnesty International claims.
[82] In a June 2015 interview by Society for Threatened Peoples with the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdulrahman stated that there was "no 'ethnic cleansing' in Tel Abyad against the Turkmen and Arabic population" and that existing restrictions were temporary and because of the danger of mines and remaining ISIL fighters in some villages.
[118] For the first time in Syrian history, civil marriage is being allowed and promoted, a significant move towards a secular open society and intermarriage between people of different religious backgrounds.
[114] Prisons are housing mostly those charged with terrorist activity related to ISIL and other extremist groups, although there are also frequent reports of supporters of Kurdish opposition parties opposed to PYD being arrested or even kidnapped.
Human Rights Watch after a visit in early 2014 reported "arbitrary arrests, due process violations, and failed to address unsolved killings and disappearances" and made recommendations for government improvement.
[58] In its separate September 2015 report, Amnesty International criticised arbitrary long term detainment followed by unfair trials, in some cases lasting minutes with no lawyers for the defendants accused of involvement with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
[124] On 22 September 2016 the security forces of the region prevented Rudaw's journalist Rengin Shero, coming from Iraqi Kurdistan, from visiting her family in Jazira canton.
Isa Rashid, another prominent Assyrian community figure who served as an education director for these targeted schools, was severely beaten outside his home by the Sutoro Police.
Kurdish opposition parties in Syria represented by KNC, who are opposed to PYD-rule, have long complained of authoritarianism, heavy political persecution and gross human rights violations.
[126][127] Due to the then militarily critical situation caused by the expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the regions of the NES from July 2014 introduced militia conscription duty in its Self-Defense Forces (HXP).
[134] The claimed political agenda of "trying to break the honor-based religious and tribal rules that confine women" is very controversial in conservative quarters of Syrian society, who either outright disagree, or who believe imposing drastic changes is irresponsible when not taking local sensitivities into mind or giving the population adequate time to adapt and progress at their own pace like other regions of the world.
[136][137][138] The Assyrian community in Jazira Canton in August 2016 founded the Ourhi Centre in the city of Qamishli, to educate teachers in order to make the Syriac-Aramaic an additional language to be taught in public schools,[139][140] which then started with the 2016/17 academic year.
[141] With that academic year, states the Rojava Education Committee, "three curriculums have replaced the old one, to include teaching in three languages: Kurdish, Arabic and Syriac.
However, open criticism of the democratic confederalist political system, doctrine, policies, establishment and status quo is generally discouraged, especially for local media.
The partisan Kurdish media is known to be vulnerable to the rally 'round the flag effect, that is, showing strong pro-PYD tendencies in times of conflict or crisis, such as during the repeated military invasions by the Turkish government.
This is said by local journalists to be due to both personal convictions of some reporters, as well as to the feeling that direct criticism of libertarian socialism would be very unpopular in a conflict-ridden context and would make them "an easy target".
International and regional media report relatively freely by Syrian standards, but they also state that there are constant underlining tensions with the PYD authorities in power and red lines that generally cannot be crossed.
[164][165] In an October 2016 report from the region, U.S. academic Si Sheppard described about Iraqi refugees fleeing the Battle of Mosul that "the lucky ones have found an unlikely haven in neighboring Syria, a place hardly synonymous with physical well-being in the popular imagination.
[167] On 24 April 2024, Amnesty International reported that there is a large-scale human rights violation of more than 56,000 people including 30,000 children and 14,500 women held indefinitely in at least 27 detention facilities for those with "perceived IS affiliation".
Detainees are held in inhumane conditions and subjected to torture including severe beatings, stress positions, and electric shocks with thousands having been forcibly disappeared.
