Lelun Afrin
We are a group of activists from the Afrin region. We decided to establish the Lêlûn Association for Victims to bring all victims from Afrin together and support them. We also seek to coordinate redress and justice efforts with other victim associations across Syria.
Our objectives are justice and restoring rights to their owners. Therefore, we intend to turn Lêlûn into an active platform that channels the voices of those oppressed in the Afrin region and a conduit that conveys their painful experiences to local, international, and UN entities. We aim to end their suffering and ensure that Syrians, in Afrin or any other area, will never be exposed to violations again.
Triggered by our duty towards the families forcibly displaced from Afrin and their dream to return home and towards those who chose to remain in their homes and, therefore, had to endure numerous violations, we pledge to advocate the causes of these families and to defend them during international events to achieve redress and ensure they have access to their lawful right of a safe and dignified return to their original places of residence in Afrin—home of peace and olives.
Over the course of the Syrian conflict, the Afrin region struggled in the throes of several existential threats and countless human rights violations, which became systemic and coordinated after Operation Olive Branch in 2018, which Türkiye initiated backed by several Syrian armed opposition groups. Many independent and neutral international organizations describe Türkiye’s post-operation presence in the region as an “occupation”.
The Turkish incursion forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere in Syria or abroad. While those who escaped hostilities continue to dream of a safe and dignified return home, those who stayed or risked their lives and returned—making out only 30% of the area’s original local population, battle with fear, rampant insecurity, and weapon chaos.
Rights organizations have documented various patterns of grave human rights violations in the Afrin region, including arbitrary arrests, torture, forced disappearance, property seizures, illegal logging of forests, Turkification, demographic change, and the construction of illegal housing settlements. The perpetrators committed all these breaches in an atmosphere of impunity.
With the obligations above, we address our dignified people in the region and outside. Lêlûn Association for Victims will be a space that embraces your hopes and a platform that will turn your current pain into a force that empowers you to rise above the crushing circumstances, seek to defend your cause, and reclaim the rights stolen from you. We hope to get your utmost support because only with your assistance can we fulfill our duties.
As to international organizations and bodies, the establishment of the Lêlûn Association for Victims is long due because we waited for the international community to step forward and fulfill its humanitarian and ethical obligation toward the people of Afrin and their cause. With the minimum attention allocated to the Afrin affair, the pace of violations accelerated in the region, which to curb, founding Lêlûn became a necessity. Seeking to combat those violations, the association emerges primarily as a humanitarian project; it is independent and has no partisan or other political affiliations. Therefore, we hope that all rights organizations and international legal entities support our work and promote the cause of Afrin to internationalize it, help it garner attention from relevant entities and organizations which already advocate for other rightful Syrian issues, and aid us in actively exposing violations that remain rife in the region and bring their perpetrators to account and, consequently, facilitate the dignified return of displaced families to their homes.
Lêlûn Association for Victims
18 March 2023