Syria wants at last to naturalize 200,000 stateless Kurds

As "good news, yet a step which is long overdue” was the comment of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on the decision of the Syrian Baath regime to finally grant naturalisation to some 200,000 stateless Kurds in the country. The Central Committee of the Party told the state news agency SANA on Thursday that it intended in the light of the increasing international pressure on Syria to grant naturalization to the Kurds.

"The Kurds have been waiting since 1962 for all of their people to receive civil rights in Syria” reported the GfbV correspondent Sarah Reinke. "Stateless persons had no right to vote, could own no land, could not apply for government jobs, their marriages were not recognized and their children were not granted Syrian citizenship either. So for many it was not even possible to go to school.” The Kurds with some two million members make up about twelve percent of the total population of Syria.

"We shall have to wait and see if Syria now in fact keeps its promise " said Reinke. Many such promises had in the past not been kept and the Kurds continued to be discriminated against and their political representatives persecuted.

On 23rd August 1962 a census was prescribed by Decree No. 93 in the Province of Al-Hassaka. The object was the Arabicization of this area in the north of Syria, which was populated in the main by Kurds. After the census 120,000 Kurds were declared stateless on 5th October 1962. Since this time the number of stateless Kurds has risen to 200,000, who are listed in the class of "foreigners” or classed as "non-registered persons”

Those Kurds are termed "foreigners” who had their Syrian nationality withdrawn in 1962. "Non-registered persons” are in official Syrian parlance Kurds who entered the province Al-Hassaka illegally after the census of 1962 and who have settled down there. The "foreigners” are issued with special identity cards, the "non-registered persons” do not even get these. There are very often in one and the same family registered and non-registered stateless persons.

With regard to educational opportunities the "non-registered persons” are especially disadvantaged. Right from the beginning, when the children first go to school there is often a problem in that they can claim no right to schooling. In order to start school permission is first required from the security service. So there are several cases at present where parents attempted in vain to send their non-registered child to school.