The French NGO Doctors Sans Frontières publishes a report on this area of non -law, prey to increasing crime, to which the Kurdish guards react by an excessive appeal to force and arbitrary arrests.
by Hélène Sallon (Beirut, correspondent)
Between the extreme violence of the armed groups and cells of the Islamic State Organization (IS) and the increasingly harsh security measures implemented by the Kurdish forces in response, residents of the AL detention camp -Hol, in northeast Syria, live in a climate of permanent fear, without protection. In A report entitled” Between two fires. Danger and despair in the al-Hol camp in Syria “, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), one of the few organizations to intervene in this camp since January 2019, describes, through testimonies, this area of lawlessness where more than 57,000 people, including two thirds of children, are arbitrarily detained in inhuman and traumatic conditions.
“Al-Hol is in fact an enormous open-air prison, the majority of whose children are children, often born in the camp, deprived of their childhood and condemned to be exposed to violence and exploitation, with Access to limited, without education and hopeless care, “describes Martine Flokstra, head of MSF operations in Syria. More than half of the occupants of the camp are less than twelve years old, two thirds are minors. In 2021, 79 children died in Al-Hol. Some were crushed by tanker trucks, others killed in fires or drowned in trenches. Some could have been saved if their transfer to the hospital had been authorized in time by camp authorities.
Since the opening of Al-Hol, in April 2016, to welcome the populations displaced by the conflict with IS, the living conditions in the camp have deteriorated clearly. From humanitarian refuge, Al-Hol turned into a detention camp after the fall of Baghouz, the last Bastion of IS in Syria in March 2019. The camp then had 73,000 residents, including 30,000 Iraqis, 22,000 Syrians and 11,000 nationals of sixty different nationalities. In the sections reserved for the Syrians and the Iraqis, the families displaced by the war against IS were mixed with the families of jihadists. Families of foreign jihadists were placed in a secure section called the appendix.
This arbitrary detention, outside of any legal framework, was justified in the name of the fight against the Islamic State, and its implementation was entrusted by the International Anti-EI Coalition to Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS, to dominant Kurdish). However, the latter do not have sufficient means to manage the population of the camp while respecting international law. “The members of the international coalition against the Islamic State and the countries whose nationals are held in Al-Hol and in other detention centers in Northeast Syrian have failed in their obligations,” deplores Martine Flokstra.
You have 59.94% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.