AZEZ (AA)
– Mehmet Burak KARADZAOGLU / Omer KOPARAN
Suad Hajj Khalef wants the return of her child who was kidnapped by the US-backed PKK/YPG terrorist organization in Ain al-Arab (Kobani) district in northern Syria, reports Anadolu.
The terrorist organization PKK/YPG continues the practice of kidnapping children and their forced recruitment in the regions they have occupied in war-torn Syria.
The terrorists mostly take the kidnapped children for training in terrorist camps and do not allow them to communicate with their families.
Children who are trained in the use of weapons in these camps are used in the organization’s terrorist activities. PKK/YPG terrorists, who are supported by the US, are thus destroying the dreams of parents and children.
After losing her husband 4 years ago, who died in a minefield in Ain al-Arab, Khalef lived alone with her son, whom she wanted to enable him to get an education, working in the fields.
Her 15-year-old son Ahmet Khalef was kidnapped in Ain al-Arab by the so-called Shebibe Sevriye youth structure.
Khalef is now lonely and just wants to see her son again, get back to her and stop the terrorist practice of kidnapping children.
– “They kidnapped him and took him away”
Speaking about his experience to an Anadolu reporter, Khalef said that his son did not return home when he left home to buy vegetables two and a half months ago and that he was kidnapped by the PKK/YPG terrorist organization.
“I found out from the neighbors that he was kidnapped. I looked for him in every street like crazy.” said Khalef and added that her child was kidnapped by structures operating under the auspices of the PKK/YPG terrorist organization.
Noting that she went to that organization several times to find out about her son’s fate, Khalef said that she was returned each time.
“I gave them (the PKK/YPG) 500 dollars. They said he was in training at the Ferhat Khalil camp in Kobani (Ain al-Arab). I went there and asked them to give me my son, they didn’t do it,” said Khalef mother bitterly.
Saying that she had also informed the leaders of the terrorist organization that her son was still young and should go to school, Khalef said they did not accept her arguments.
“They didn’t accept it. They did not give me my child. They didn’t show me my son. They took my son whom I was caring for. Is this the democratic structure they are talking about? I love my son. I don’t want anything else. My son is not a warrior, he does not know how to fight. I have nothing left but his photos. “My son has nothing to do with the war,” she said.
– “Our world has turned upside down”
“After my husband died, my son and I were left alone. I worked in the fields so that he could study and have a decent life. I gave him advice to study and get a proper education. “He wanted to be a doctor when he grew up,” says Kalef.
The grieving mother said her life was turned upside down after her son briefly left their home.
“When my son was taken to a camp, it was like they took away my soul. My son knew nothing but a notebook, a pencil and school. I have no one but him. They took him to fight. “His dream is to grow up, become a doctor and benefit everyone,” said Khalef.
– Documenting the forced arming of children by PKK/YPG terrorists
Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, met with PKK/YPG leader Ferhat Abdi Shahin, codenamed “Mazlum Abdi”, at the UN Office in Geneva on June 29, 2019, and in an official ceremony signed an action plan to end the practice of using child warriors within the organization. Turkiye sent a note of protest to the UN at this event.
In its report released on January 16, 2020, the UN Human Rights Council stated that PKK/YPG terrorists are using children as “warriors” in Syria.
The recruitment of children by the PKK/YPG terrorist organization and their use in combat has also been put on the agenda along with the 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the US State Department on June 26, 2020.
“The YPG continues to forcibly recruit and use 12-year-old girls and boys from refugee camps in northwestern Syria,” the report said.
The UN’s annual report on children in armed conflict for the period January-December 2022 states that the PKK terrorist organization and its Syrian affiliates, the SDF and the YPG, are using over 1,200 children as “soldiers”.
The report states that the PKK’s Syrian branch, the SDF, recruited 637 children, and structures affiliated with the PKK/YPG and the SDF recruited another 633 children.
UN Secretary General Guterres also made a statement regarding this report.
“I am extremely concerned about the use of children as soldiers by the YPG/PKK. I call on them to stop using children as soldiers and for other purposes and to release all the children who are in their ranks,” Guterres said.
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