Killed Kurdish journalists Nazim Daştan and Cihan Bilgin will be buried in Qamishli (Qamişlo), North and East Syria, after a delegation including family members of Daştan and Bilgin was stopped and left waiting at the Habur border crossing for more than three days, where they had planned to cross to collect their bodies.
The decision to bury the bodies of the journalists in Qamishli rather than in their hometowns deprives the families of Daştan and Bilgin of the right to mourn and bury the bodies of the murdered journalists themselves.
The announcement comes after it was first stated that the bodies of Daştan and Bilgin would be brought from Qamishli to the Nusaybin (Nisêbîn) district of Mardin (Mêrdîn) and delivered to the families there. However, the families who went to Nusaybin were not given the bodies.
Afterwards, it was stated that the bodies would be taken by their families from the Sêmalka Border Gate between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and North and East Syria and taken to their hometowns through the Habur Border Gate in the Silopi district of Şirnak (Şirnex) in southeastern Turkey.
In this context, a delegation including the families of Daştan and Bilgin wanted to pass through Habur Border Gate to the Kurdistan Region. When the delegation was not allowed to pass, a vigil was organised. After the vigil stayed without success, the delegation joined a demonstration in Silopi to protest about the holding of the delegation at the border gate.
A similar protest took place in Van (Wan), where Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party MP Zülküf Uçar condemned the standstill at the Harbur Gate and said, “It is an obligation to deliver the bodies of Nazım Daştan and Cihan Bilgin to their families and to ensure the right to mourn in their own lands.”
Daştan and Bilgin were killed in a Turkish drone strike on 19 December, whilst they were reporting on the latest situation close to the Tishreen Dam in northeastern Syria. The deaths of Bilgin and Daştan have drawn attention to the risks faced by journalists operating in conflict zones.
