Politician of the Kurdish National Council dies due to PYD imprisonment

On Monday, December 5, 2016, Selah Younis, also known as Selah Abu Kovan, member of the ‘Amudah Local Committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party – Syria (PDK-S), died after several failed surgeries in a hospital in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
On June 14, 2016, Younis had been arrested by the Asayiș, the security service of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Although he lost a lot of weight and his lungs and heart fell ill due to the bad detention conditions, the PYD failed to provide him with medication. As a result, he went blind in one eye. The PYD then agreed to release him for the time of his medical treatment. As a pledge he had to cede his house to the PYD. The temporary release took place on September 6, 2016.

Selah Said Younis was born in 1968 in the village of Tel Habash, close to ‘Amudah. With his wife, he had five children. Selah Younis was imprisoned by the Syrian regime five times between 2005 and 2010, because he took a stand for freedom and democracy. This stance also turned him into a target of the barbarous, repressive politics of the PYD, politics seeking to silence all political opponents by defamation, attacks on offices and demonstrations, unlawful detentions and (negligent) homicide.
The authoritarian regime of the PYD in Northern Syria will only end if the people of Syrian Kurdistan, regardless of their religious affiliation or their language, rise up and if international players as the US stop supporting the PYD and its militias.

 

05 December 2016
Kurdish National Council in Syria – Geneva Office

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