An appeal to Chancellor Merkel: Islamists could benefit – Stop the arms exports to Saudi Arabia and Turkey immediately!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) fears that military equipment from Germany might get into the hands of radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Therefore, the Göttingen-based international human rights organization sent an urgent appeal to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, asking her not to to allow any more arms exports to these two countries – as these could help to support the radical groups of the Syrian opposition. Islamist rebels from the ranks of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other groups that are close to the terrorist network Al Qaeda are already fighting against the non-Sunni and non-Arab population of Syria. It is especially the minorities such as the Assyrian Aramaic, Armenian and Arabic-speaking Christians, Yezidis and Muslim Kurds who are threatened by the totalitarian Islamic ideology of Jihadists and Salafists from all over the world.

Kurds from the north-west of the country informed the STP by telephone that Islamists had attacked the two peaceful Kurdish villages Til Slor and Dschalame in the region of Atma – the Syrian-Turkish border area – with mortars on Thursday night. In Dschalame, a ten year old girl was killed and several civilians were wounded. Both villages are part of the Afrin district, located 30 km to the north-west of Aleppo. According to latest information by the STP, this small region has taken up about 300,000 IDPs – mostly Kurds, but also Arab Sunnis.

Kurdish politicians suggest that the Islamists are trying to prevent the Kurdish population in the Afrin region from harvesting olives. Olives are the main source of income in the region. Syrian opposition groups have been blocking the access roads to Afrin for months – with support from the Turkish government. Although the majority of the Kurdish people are Muslims, the radical Islamists despise them because they refuse to support the struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria. In addition, the Islamists are trying to fight the emergence of a self-government in the Kurdish regions of Syria.