Report on Kurdistan Street Special Edition
(Derik, Kirkuk, Amuda, Qamishli, Hasakah, Afrin, Kobani, Darbasiyah, and Serekaniye) .
Special to KurdStreet – Evan Amin – Al Jazeera Office:
Protests against the elections carried out by the Syrian government in a process activists regarded as a farce were seen in the Kurdish territories. Following such events and what was happening, the correspondents in every city on the island helped the Kurdistan Street Network to understand the electoral environment in all the areas.
Starting from Dirk and Kirkuk:
The Kurdish Youth Movement by itself is proving the lack of the two councils and the other coordination committees as well as the absence of legitimate elections in the two cities.
Organized by the Kurdish Youth Movement, a show of no more than two hundred protestors from many locations, including Alian, Derik, and Kocher, took place at 10:30 in the morning before the movement headquarters.
On June 3, 2014, they wandered the city streets chanting loudly, criticizing the deadly elections, and declare the Kurds and Syrians treachery should they have taken part in them. With the absence of all coordination and youth, Kurdish, and party activity, the Asayish clearly participated in safeguarding the demonstration by organizing traffic and discipline. There were absent the General Council of the Youth Movement, the Deir Kahemko Coordination, and the Kurdish Council.
The demonstration lacked also flags of the Syrian revolution. There are no official electoral demonstrations; the city stays peaceful.
The refusal of any election or continuation of Bashar al-Assad and his criminal government by the Kurdish poet led Kirkuk to not see any vote boxes or electoral demonstrations. Activists from the Kurdish Youth Movement staged a little rally in the city on election night to show his rejection of this drama.
Tirbespi and Jal Agha accompany Kurdish cities who boycotted the elections.
With their citizens usually rejecting the Assad government’s sham, the two cities did not see any voting boxes or elections.
Like usual, Amouda boycotts the polls with large-scale demonstrations.
Carrying slogans criticizing the brutal elections and advocating holding the government responsible instead of supporting it, the people of Amouda and their activists planned a protest against the elections.
Qamishli: City issues, partial and limited elections, protests elsewhere, and few confrontational encounters.
While ballot boxes were placed in the security square areas and Arab neighborhoods under great security protection, accompanied by celebrations and raising images of Bashar al-Assad, the city of Qamishli saw a demonstration called for by the Kurdish youth movement and the Future Movement reject the bloody elections.
Reports of armed conflicts between Umm Farsan villagers and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) surfaced following the YPG’s attempt to stop the locals from casting ballots. News of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) attacking a polling station in the Qamishli countryside (Tal Awda) murdering two members of the National Defense Forces stationed close by and burning and ruining ballot boxes has surfaced.
According to Kurdistan Street sources, Kurdish Asayish soldiers also seized more than 16 vote boxes and blocked more than forty polling sites in within their purview.
Al-Hasakah and the voting box seizure in regions under YPG authority
Like the city of Qamishli, it seems split in terms of the election process even though it is the provincial capital. While the Asayish forces stopped polling centers, seized vote boxes, and even violently blocked polling sites, the ballot boxes were dispersed in public buildings within the authority of the government and its security forces. According to KurdStreet, the Asayish closed around twenty polling sites.
With ISIS stopping any boxes from being placed in areas under its influence as well as vehicles from arriving from regions south of Hasakah.
Kurdistan Street has acquired the names of several of the closed centers under Asayish authority. Some campaigners believe they are:
According to information gleaned from “pro-regime sources,” the Asayish beat staff members at six polling sites, smashed more than eleven ballot boxes, and kicked some citizens who had come to cast a presidential ballot.
List of the closed centers’ names:
1 Rufaydah Islamic
2- Mushairfa, College of Science. The Kurdistan flag was raised after the pupils were kicked out.
Jerusalem, Tel Hajar
4- Mazen Al-Hussein
5. Nazareth, Saif al-Dawla
6- Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib: supervisator
7: Al-Kalasa Technical Institute
8- Jerusalem 2 – Tell Hajar
Nine- ibn Rushd: Mushairfa
10: Tel Hajar, Ahmed Zaal
11- Mahmoud Issa: Director of Supervisor
twelve: the Aziziah of the Two Belts
13 – Mahmoud Al-Nayef – Tal Hajar
14- Nazareth Sholi – Fawaz
15. Iskandar Faraj for Nazareth
16- Al-Farahidi Al-Salihiya
17- Saad bin Abi Waqqas – Al-Salihiya
18 – Ahmed Mukhlef – Al-Salihiya
19. Jean Hajjar, Al-Salihiya
20. Abdullah Al-Qadri – Al-Salihiya
21. Abdul Ahad Musa: Class
22: Hamed Mahfouz – Al-Salihiya
These sources state that the locations where staff members were attacked comprise:
1. Mahmoud Al-Nayef: Tal Hajar
2. Ahmed Zaal, Tal Hajar
3- Jean Hajjar: Al-Salihiyah; the vote box was wrecked.
4- Abdullah Al-Qadri: The ballot box was seized and employees were denied entrance.
Regarding the three vote boxes set aside for the Ghwayran area, Fatima Al-Zahra, Naim Al-Laji, and another center were moved to the party branch in the city center.
Al-Darbasiyah and Kani Seri
Relative peace and a broad election boycott
Kurdish Street reporters claim that there was an official, political, and popular boycott of the elections and that the cities of Darbasiyah and Sere Kaniye did not see any electoral expressions or the presence of any voting boxes.
Kobani, Afrin
According to KurdStreet journalists, Kobani and Afrin have joined other Syrian Kurdish cities in boycotting the elections, refraining from holding vote boxes, and carrying on with their regular lives.
Eventually
The Kurdish people clearly reject any kind of electoral involvement and see with resentment any attempt to extend the term of a ruler accused of killing his people and uprooting them outside their borders.