Nowruz Shooting on Video
SMN 1, May 2 2010
It starts with the sound of a woman screaming in Kurdish “someone has been shot”, before the rattling of guns takes over.
A young man is then seen lying on the ground, his head covered in blood. In the background, the scene is chaotic with people trying to escape hurriedly as Kurdish voices chanting “şehîd namre” (a martyr never dies) get louder.
These scenes are from an amateur video lasting about two minutes which was shot in al-Raqqa in north-eastern Syria on March 21 during Nowruz, the Kurdish new year celebration.
The bloody incident marred an important festival for an ethnic minority that constitutes around ten per cent of the Syrian population. Reports by local and international human rights groups said that at least one person was killed and many were wounded after security forces opened fire on Kurdish revellers.
The video, which was apparently captured on a mobile phone by one of the participants in the celebration, was first posted on March 28 on the website of the London-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory.
It was then widely circulated on local and international websites and also found its way to the ireport section of CNN’s website.
In the details of the incident, local groups said that the trouble started when security officials asked the organisers of Nowruz festivities in Matahen, a small town in the al-Raqqa area, to remove Kurdish flags and posters of Abdullah Ocalan, a prominent Turkish Kurdish guerrilla leader.
When the organisers, who are from an illicit Syrian Kurdish party, the PYD, refused to obey the orders, security forces started firing into the air, according to the human rights observatory. The situation quickly spiralled out of control with police firing live ammunition at the crowd and Kurdish revellers hurling stones at them.
It was not the first time that the Syrian authorities have resorted to violence against the Kurds.
Kurds suffer from political and cultural repression in Syria, according to local and international advocacy groups.
