Kurdish Committee for Human Rights Mr. President of the Session, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on the situation of the Kurds’ suffering in Syria, despite them being the second [largest] peoples in the country. My name is Suleyman Ismail and I am the President of the board of management of the Kurdish committee for Human Rights in Syria (Al-Rasid). The Kurdish committee was founded on 9.4.2006 and the state didn’t grant [it] a license for its work. Responsibilities of the committee: defending human rights regardless of [the person’s] political or peoples affiliations in Syria. In cooperation with NGOs, the Syrian Federation for Human Rights in Syria was founded and it also wasn’t granted a license. We appreciate what was stated in the comment of my colleague, the representative of YASA, and we add that there is no general penal law, locally or internationally approved, applied to the Kurds in Syrian Kurdistan. This [has been applied] by the subsequent governments since its independence, and the sufferings of the Kurds has increased after the Baath Party took the rule in Syria. The districts suffer from the lack of an organised and codified penal law, approved by an authority, which is authorised to make laws following the example of the civilised world. The emergency law has been applied in Syria since the advent of the rule of the Baath party on 8.3.1963, and despite the claims of the Syrian Government of its theoretical repeal, it is still applied in practice, which allows, pursuant to it, [the application of] customary law, especially in the Kurdish regions, according to their whim and on the Kurds instead of [applying] other penal laws. Exceptional decrees and laws are also applied in contradictory forms to the Kurds. Kurds in Syria are being prosecuted in front of exceptional courts, specifically prepared for them, as well as military courts, and put into special prisons in isolation from prisoners from other peoples in order to oppress and intimidate them. During the Syrian revolution the nationality, of which they had been arbitrarily stripped in 1962, was returned to some Kurds, [but] still thousands of Kurds are stripped of it. This discrimination creates in itself a criminal and administrative flaw, because they are being completely kept away from the public life. I appeal to the United Nations to support Syrian Kurds in order to remove this injustice from their shoulders by repealing all the exceptional laws, and compel the Syrian government to apply criminal and administrative laws compatible with the international covenants and agreements. Thank you again for all your efforts, though we still see that there is no degree of responsibility.