Kurdistan and The Kurds A Divided Homeland and a Nation without ...

pressure from the Kurds on the authorities. Since
then and until his death in 1993 this Kurdish hero was
subjected to arrest more than 18 times and spent more
than 12 years in Syrian prisons, and he was not allowed
to travel because the Syrian government withdrew his
Syrian nationality certificate in 1962.
2. In 1951 the Syrian authorities assassinated Prince
Jaladet Baderkhan and exiled his brother (Prince
Kameran), and a number of other Kurdish personalities
such as Dr Nooraldine Zaza.
3. In 1958 the Syrian authorities dismissed hundreds of
Kurdish officers from the army because of their Kurdish
ethnicity. Among them: General Tawfiq Nezamadine,
the Commander in Chief of the Syrian army; General
Mahmoud Shawkat, Colonel Foad Melatli, Colonel
Bakri Qutrush…
4. The Syrian authorities murdered 380 children in the
city of Amuda by burning them to death inside a cinema
while they were watching a movie on 13/11/1960.
5. In 1962 the Syrian authorities deprived 150,000 Kurds
from the region of Al-Jazeera of the Syrian nationality
with their population today reaching more than half a
million of Kurds.
6. In 1967 the Syrian authorities initiated a racist policy
named “Arabic Belt” aiming to displace the Kurdish
population from borders with Turkey and Iraq (15
Km in width and 375 Km long) and replace them
with Arabs. The purpose was to separate the Kurds
of Al-Jazeera from the other parts of Kurdistan in
Iraq and Turkey using a human Arabic belt and to
create new modern Arab settlements beside each
Kurdish village deprived of any necessary services.
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