Title: Arbitrary Detention and Torture are a Systemic Oppression Policy in Northwestern Syria
Author: Human Rights Organization-Afrin and Syrians for Truth and Justice
Place of publication:
Release date:February 2023

The present paper cites summaries of 40 interviews conducted in the context of a joint project between Human Rights Organization-Afrin and Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ). The interviews were conducted in 2021 and early 2022 with arrest survivors and/or members of their families in the Syrian Kurdish-majority Afrin region, northwest Syria.
The project of the two partner organizations aims not only to collect evidence on the human rights violations committed against the interviewed victims but also to provide various forms of psychological, medical, and legal support to those victims through specialized experts.
The present paper sheds light on crimes and violations committed by Turkish-backed Syrian armed opposition groups in control of vast territories in northwest Syria.
United Nations committees as well as international and local organizations have documented systematic patterns of violations perpetrated against residents of Afrin and other Kurdish-majority areas. The documented violations include arbitrary deprivation of liberty, forcing people out of their home areas through threats, extortion, murder, kidnapping, torture and detention, and rape and sexual violence against women and girls.[1]