On the fourth anniversary of the Turkish military’s occupation campaign, thousands of Kurdish refugees from Afrin, North Syria, rallied in protest on the M5 international highway, Hawar News Agency reported.
The refugees carried banners and placards that read, ‘We’ll intensify the resistance and overcome the occupiers,’ ‘Defend your land and honour, defeat the occupiers and ISIS’ at the demonstration on Thursday.
The march on the highway turned into a massive gathering near the Veger refugee camp in the district of Sherawa.
A member of the revolutionary Youth Movement, Rashid Sileman, addressed the crowd. He indicated that the people of Afrin, four years ago, had put up a resistance for 58 days against Turkey, who had made plans to occupy the area in only three days, equipped with the high technology and weapons of NATO.
“The resistance of the century is now in its second phase,” he said. “The refugees at the core of the resistance in Shahba also assure a return to Afrin.”
“This historic resistance forced Turkey to modify its plans to break it and destroy the Kurdish people,” said Shiraz Hamo, co-chair of the Executive Council of the Afrin region, in his speech following Sileman’s.
He stated that Afrin’s liberation would be the fruit of the resistance, which has carried on despite attacks by the Turkish army against the whole society and in the face of an embargo by the Damascus administration.
Mihemed Adil, a representative for the Assembly of Shahba, made an address after Hamo.
Underlining that Turkey’s actions directly targeted the civilian population, he said that they were similar to those previously carried out by the Islamic State against Kurds and other peoples of Syria.
Adil vowed to ‘continue resisting against the plans of the occupiers.’
