DAMASCUS, Syria, May 23 (UPI) -- An unlicensed Syrian Kurdish party Friday denied allegations by security officials that two of its members were seeking to deprive Syria of part of its territory.
Yakiti Central Committee Secretary Abd al-Baqi Yusif said in a statement that Syrian authorities had detained two Yakiti members, Hasan Salih and Marwan Uthman, on charges of belonging to a secret organization.
The two were arrested in December after Yakiti had a peaceful demonstration in from of Syria's Parliament calling on the government to give the minority Syrian Kurds equal treatment with the country's Arab majority.
Yusif's statement said an investigating magistrate then sent Salih and Uthman for trial on charges of inciting religious and ethnic problems.
The 1.5 million or so Kurds in Syria belong to the Iranian group of peoples unlike the Semitic Arabs.
A state security court recently changed the charges to the crime of attempting to separate parts of Syria's territory and annex it to a foreign country which it did not specify.
The Yakiti statement said the fact that the charges against Salih and Uthman have been changed three times in six months indicated that they were not true.
The only foreign countries that could be meant are neighboring Turkey and Iraq, which both have important Kurdish populations. But the Turkish government is hostile to assertions of Kurdish cultural identity and represses separatist activities among its own Kurds. So Turkey is not plausibly a country that Syrian Kurds would wish to join.
Iraq, however, has a Kurdish area that is virtually self-governing and, analysts said, Damascus fears that its Kurds might seek to form their own area free of rule from Damascus or even seek union with Iraqi Kurdistan.
The two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, are known to have representatives and local sympathizers in the northeastern corner of Syria where most of the Syrian Kurds live.
Yakiti, however, stresses the need for a resolution of the Syrian Kurdish problem within the framework of Syria's territorial unity, the statement said.
The December demonstration was the first of its kind in the 40 years since the Arab nationalist Baath party took power in Syria.
More than 100 Kurdish protesters sought an end to the denial of Syrian nationality to some 200,000 Kurds as the result of what they consider was a rigged census in 1962. The Syrian authorities argue that these affected Kurds had infiltrated from Turkey or Iraq and had not become Syrian citizens.
The demonstrators waved signs that read: "Let Syria be the homeland of all its sons," "Citizenship for Kurds," "Down with the Ban on Kurdish Language and Culture," and "Respect Human Rights in Syria."
Last August, President Bashar Assad made the first visit by a president to pre-dominantly Kurdish Hasaka province in what was seen as a goodwill gesture.
There are some 10 illegal Kurdish groups in Syria where the ruling Baath Party refuses to license political parties based on cultural or religious identity.
(With additional reporting by Derk Kinnane Roelofsma in Washington.)
